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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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Library ope 



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ssue and return 



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Historic Towns 



EDITED BY 

EDWARD A. FREEMAN. D.C.L. & Rev. WILLIAM HUNT, M.A. 



NEW YORK 



Historic Towns 



NEW YORK 



BY 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

ii 

AUTHOR OF "THE WINNING OF THE WEST," ETC. 




* co ^' 



LONDON 
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AND NEW YORK; 15 EAST 16 th STREET 

1891 

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All rights reservec 



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Copt/right, 1801, 
By Theodore Roosevelt. 



®ni&ersitg 13rrss : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



ft 




PREFACE 



Mrs. Martha J. Lamb's "History of the City of 
New York," the other histories of the city by Miss 
Booth, and Messrs. Lossing, Todd, and Valentine ; 
the Brodhead and O'Callaghan papers ; Hammond's 
" Political History of New York ; " Dougherty's " Con- 
stitutions of New York ; " Cooper's " Sataustoe " and 
"Miles Wallingford ; " Tuckerman's "Diary of Philip 
Hone ; " Parton's " Topics of the Time ; " Adams's 
"Chapter of Erie;" Shea's and De Courcey's "His- 
tory of the Catholic Church in the United States;" 
and Lounsbury's admirable " Life of Cooper," — the 
bast piece of American literary biography ever yet 
done, — are among the authorities consulted in pre- 
paring this volume. I wish to express my particular 
thanks to Mr. Brander Matthews, who indeed is re- 
sponsible for my undertaking to write the book at all. 

The limited space allowed forbade the use of the 
vast mass of manuscript which was obtainable. The 
temptation was very great to attempt a more exhaust- 
ive study of the events of the last forty years, — that 



viii Preface. 

is, the history of modern and contemporary New York ; 
for this is the most important and instructive portion 
of our history, with the possible exception of the Fed- 
eralist period. But of course such a study would be 
entirely out of place in a book of this kind. 

It has been my aim less to collect new facts than to 
draw from the immense storehouse of facts already 
collected those which were of real importance in New 
York history, and to show their true meaning, and their 
relations to one another ; to sketch the workings of the 
town's life, social, commercial, and political, at succes- 
sive periods, with their sharp transformations and con- 
trasts ; and to trace the causes which gradually changed 
a little Dutch trading-hamlet into a huge American city. 
I have also striven to make clear the logical sequence 
and continuity of these events ; to outline the steps by 
which the city gradually obtained a free political life ; 
and to give proper prominence to the remarkable and 
ever-recurring revolutions in the ethnic make-up of our 
mixed population, — a population which from the begin- 
ning has been composed of many different race-elements, 
and which has owed its marvellous growth more to 
immigration than to natural increase. 

I had to content myself with barely touching on the 
social and political problems of the present day ; for to 
deal with these at any length would turn the volume 
into a tract instead of a history. I have no wish to 
hide or excuse our faults; for I hold that he is often 



Preface. ix 

the "best American who strives hardest to correct Amer- 
ican shortcomings, and is most willing to profit by the 
wisdom and experience of other nations, especially of 
those that are nearest akin to ns by blood, belief, speech, 
and law, and that ate knit closest to us by the kindly 
ties of a former common history and common tradition. 

Nevertheless, I am just as little disposed to give way 
to undue pessimism as to undue and arrogant optimism. 
Both our virtues and defects should be taken into ac- 
count. For instance, there are great European cities 
with much cleaner municipal governments than ours ; 
but on the other hand, the condition of the masses of 
the population in these same cities is much worse than 
it is in New York. Our marked superiority in one 
respect is no excuse or palliation for our lamentable 
falling off in another ; but it must at least be accepted 
as an offset. We have been favoured with some pecu- 
liar advantages, and we have been forced to struggle 
against other peculiar disadvantages; and both must 
be given due weight. 

In speaking to my own countrymen there is one 
point upon which I wish to lay especial stress ; that is, 
the necessity for a feeling of broad, radical, and intense 
Americanism, if good work is to be done in any direc- 
tion. Above all, the one essential for success in every 
political movement which is to do lasting good, is that 
our citizens should act as Americans ; not as Americans 
with a prefix and qualification, — not as Irish Americans, 



x Preface. 

German Americans, Native Americans, — but as Ameri- 
cans pure and simple. It is an outrage for a man to 
drag foreign politics into our contests, and vote as an 
Irishman or German or other foreigner, as the case may 
be; and there is no worse citizen than the professional 
Irish dynamiter or German anarchist, because of his 
attitude toward our social and political life, not to 
mention his efforts to embroil us with foreign powers. 
But it is no less an outrage to discriminate against one 
who has become an American in good faith, merely be- 
cause of his creed or birthplace. Every man who has 
gone into practical politics knows well enough that if he 
joins good men and fights those who are evil, he can pay 
no heed to lines of division drawn according to race and 
religion. It would be well for New York if a larger 
proportion of her native-born children came up to the 
standard set by not a few of those of foreign birth. The 
two men who did most to give Brooklyn good muni- 
cipal government were two mayors, one of German 
birth, the other of pure native American stock. My own 
warmest and most disinterested political friends and 
supporters in the city, and most trusty allies in the 
State Legislature, included men of Irish and German no 
less than of native American descent, — but all of them 
genuine Americans, the former just as much so as the 
latter. No city could wish representatives more loyal 
and disinterested in their devotion to the welfare of the 
commonwealth, — a devotion for which they were often 



Preface. xi 

ill rewarded. Of the last four mayors of New York, two 

have been of native and two of Irish stock ; and no 

political line can be drawn a*niong them which will not 

throw one Irishman and one American on one side, and 

one Irishman and one American on the other. In short, 

the most important lesson taught by the history of New 

York City is the lesson of Americanism, — the lesson 

that he among us who wishes to win honour in our life, 

and to play his part honestly and manfully, must be 

indeed an American in spirit and purpose, in heart and 

thought and deed. 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

Sagamore Hill, 

November, 1890. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

DISCOVERY AND FIRST SETTLEMENT. 1609-1626. 

PAGE 

Hendrik Hudson's Discoveries — Spirit of Exploration — Conquests of 
Spain and Portugal — Sea-Rovers of Holland and England — Settle- 
ments on the Atlantic Coast — Effect of Battle of Lutzen on America 

— Hudson's Relations with the Indians — Exploration of the Hud- 
son River — Adrian Block, the Eirst Shipbuilder of America — The 
Fur Trade — The New Netherland Company — The West India Com- 
pany — Foundation of the City — Arrival of Peter Minuit ... 1 

CHAPTER II. 

THE DUTCH TOWN UNDER THE FIRST THREE DIRECTORS. 1626-1647. 

Purchase of Manhattan Island — New Amsterdam Founded — Physical 
Features of the Island — Minuit's Administration — Old- World 
Ideas of Colonization — The Fur Trade— Patroons — Vassalage of 
Early Settlers — Early Farming — Shipbuilding — Wouter Van 
Twiller's Administration — The First Schoolmaster — Relations with 
Indians — Troubles between Dutch and English — Colonies on the 
Connecticut and the Delaware— Kieft's Administration — Improve- 
ments under Kieft — Immigration — Swedish Settlements on the 
Delaware — Indian Wars and Massacres — Foundation of Popular 
Government— Removal of Kieft 12 

CHAPTER III. 

STDTVESANT AND THE END OF DUTCH RULE. 1647-1664. 

Stuyvesant's Character — Improvement of the Colony — Ethnic Fea- 
tures of Early Population — Incorporation of the City —The Stock- 
ade on the Site of Wall Street — The Canal — Ravages by Wolves 

— Early Colonial Architecture and Costumes — New Year Celebra- 
tions — Troubles with Indians — Revolt on Long Island — Religious 
Persecution — Seizure of New Netherlands by the English ... 26 



xiv Contents. 



chapter IV. 

NEW AMSTERDAM BECOMES NEW YORK. THE BEGINNING OF ENG- 
LISH rule 1061-1674. 

PAGE 

The City Rechristened — English Rule all along the Coast — Dangers 
Surrounding the Settlements — Rule of Governor Nicolls — Religious 
Liberty — Naturalization — Race Prejudice — Aristocracy — Refusal 
of Right to Elect Representatives — The Peace of Breda — Adminis- 
tration of Governor Lovelace — The First Social Club — Troubles 
with Long Island Puritans — Prosperity — Whaling and Fisheries — 
Early Conception of the New York Exchange — English and Dutch 
War — Establishment of Mails — Recapture of New York by the 
Dutch — Administration of Governor Colve — Cession of t lie City to 
the English — Appointment of Governor Andros 38 



CHAPTER V. 

NEW YORK UNDER THE STUARTS. 1674-1688. 

Administration of Governor Andros — Flour Monopoly — Abolition of In- 
dian Slavery — Contemplated Invasion of New England — Recall of 
Andros — Administration of Lieutenant-Governor Brockholls — In- 
ternal Disturbances — Demand for a Provincial Assembly — Adminis- 
tration of Governor Dongan — Religious Toleration — Establishment 
of the Provincial Assembly — Charter of Liberties and Privileges — 
Self-Govern ment Secured — Naturalization — Increased Prosperity — 
The Board of Aldermen — Sabbatarian Laws — Tyranny of James II. 

— Downfall of Dongan — Reappointment of Andros — Accession of 
William III. — Fall of Andros — Union between English and Dutch 
Elements — Race Differences and Fusion 49 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE USURPATION OF LE1SLER. 1689-1691. 

Internal Dissensions — Rise of the Popular Party — Leadership of Leis- 
ler and Milborne — Religious Troubles — Seizure of the Fort by 
Leisler — The Popular Party in Control of the City — Machinations 
of the House of Stuart — Headstrong Policy of Leisler — Animosity 
between Leisler and the Aristocracy — Leisler's Treason — Com- 
mittee of Safety — Election of the First Mayor — Congress of the 
Colonies — Expedition against Canada — Privateering — Waning 
Power of Leisler — Appointment of Governor Sloughter— Skirmish 
between Regulars and Militia — Execution of Leisler and Milborne 

— Downfall of the Popular Party — Limited Religious Liberty . . GO 



COXTENTS XV 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL SEAPORT. 1691-1720. 

PAGE 

Wars with France — Self -Government — Shipping Industries — Priva- 
teers and Pirates — Slave Trade — Foundations of Large Fortunes — 
Freebooters— Governor Fletcher's Connivance at Piracy — Adminis- 
tration of Fletcher — Smuggling — Recall of Fletcher — Administra- 
tion of Governor Bellomont — Active Measures against Pirates — 
Career of Capt. Kidd — Reform of Land System — Election Frauds 

— Administration of Lord Cornbury — Demands for Self-Government 

— Administration of Governor Hunter — German Immigration . . 73 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 1720-1764. 

Characteristics of Population — Religious Bodies — English the Official 
Language — King's College — Social Lines — Social Customs — 
Sports — Armorial Bearings — Dutch Festivals — Education — Con- 
stituents, of New York Society — Labour — Negro Slavery — Negro 
Insurrection — Incendiary Fires — The " New York Gazette" — The 
" Weekly Journal " — Liberty of the Press — Family Factions . . 89 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE UNREST BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 1764-1774. 

A New Chapter in American History — Threatened Disruption of Col- 
onial System — European Theory of Colonization — Attitude of Col- 
onies toward Mother Country in Matters of Defence — Verdict of 
History on Revolt of the Colonies — British Operations — Position of 
the Colonies Contrasted with that of the Federal Union of States — 
Classes and Parties — New York Leaders of the Revolution —The 
Stamp Act — Sons of Liberty — Stamp-Act Riots — Repeal of the 
Stamp Act — The Billeting Act — The Liberty-Pole Riots — The Tea 
Act and its Results — The First Continental Congress 104 

CHAPTER X. 

THE REVOLUTIONARY AVAR. 1775-1783. 

The Second Continental Congress — Lukewarmness about Revolution — 
The Loyalists — Mob Violence — Closing of Kpiscopal Churches — 
The Struggle for Independence — Abolition of the Colonial Assem- 
bly— Washington Assumes Command in New York — Weakness of 
the City — British Operations against New York— The Hessians — 



xvi Contents. 



PAGE 



Tory Plots — American Defeat on Long Island — Washington's 
Evacuation of the City — Defeat at Kip's Ba}' — Action at Haarlem 
Heights— Battle of White Plains — Washington's Retreat to New 
Jersey — Victor}' at Trenton — Terrors of the British Occupation — 
Great Fires — Execution of Nathan Hale — Horrors of the Prisons — 
Washington's Difficulties — British Evacuation 12! 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE FEDERALIST CITY. 1783-1800. 

Depression after the Revolution — Improvements and Rebuilding — 
Columbia College — The New York Society Library — The State 
Constitution — Religious Toleration — The New York Medical So- 
ciety — The " Doctor's Mob" Riots — Enlargement of Commerce — 
Suffrage, and Appointment to Office — Municipal Government — 
State Patronage — Foundation of the Federal Government — Lead- 
ers of the Federalist Party — Governor Clinton — " The Federalist " 

— Procession in Honour of the Federal Constitution — New York the 
Federal Capital — The Jeffersonian Republicans — Federal Patron- 
age — Aaron Burr — Scurrility of the Press — Political Riots — Elec- 
tion of Burr to the Vice- Presidency — Downfall of the Federalist 
Party 142 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE BEGINNING OF DEMOCRATIC RULE. 1801-1821. 

Tie Vote between Jefferson and Burr — Rise of Democratic Supremacy 

— The Spoils System — Family Influence in Politics — Downfall of 
Burr — Hamilton Killed by Burr — Fall of the Livingstons from 
Power — Political Bitterness — State Banks — Social Life and Cus- 
toms — Municipal Regulations— Markets — Sanitary Deficiencies — 
Charities — Foundation of Free-School System — Scientific and Lit- 
erary Societies — Literature — Beginning of Steam Navigation — 
The War < f 1812 — Right of Search — Privateering— European Im- 
migration — Assimilation of the Dutch — Negro Emancipation — 
The ''New England Invasion " 159 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE GROWTH OF THE COMMERCIAL AXIJ DEMOCRATIC CITY. 

1821-1860 

Increased Population — Constitutional Amendments - — Extension of 
Suffrage — N?gro Suffrage — Constitutional Provisions for Election 



Contents. xvii 

PAGE 

of Officers — Material Prosperity — The Erie Canal — Steam Trans- 
portation and Electricity — Commercial Enterprise — Careers of 
John Jacob Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt— The Eur Trade — The 
Clipper Ships of New York — Decay of Shipping — Dangers of 
Poverty — Increase of Immigration — The German Population — 
The Irish Population — Americanization of Immigrants — Growth 
of the Roman Catholic Church —The Cholera Epidemic — Riots — 
Political Parties — Roman Catholic Opposition to the Public-School 
System — Power of Tammany Hall — Election Frauds — Municipal 
Bribery — State Interference in Municipal Matters — Police Riots — 
Architecture — Art and Literature — European Travel and its In- 
fluence — Social Features 175 

CHAPTER XIV. 

RECENT HISTORY. 1860-1890. 

Increase of Population and Municipal Territory — Outbreak of the Civil 
War — Secession Influences — Reawakened Loyalty — Active Sup- 
port of the Federal Government — Draft Riots — Hibernian Riots — 
Political Corruption — Stock-Swindling — The Tweed Ring — 
Dangers of the Political System, and their Remedies — Change of 
Character of Immigration — Relative Strength of the Churches — 
Improvement in Architecture — The East River Bridge — Central 
Park — Clubs — Public Buildings — Charities — Cooper Union — 
Celebration of the Federal Constitution's Centennial — Science, Art, 
and Literature — Social Life — Future Prospects 201 



MAPS. 

The Towne of New York. 1GC1-1668 Frontispiece 

New York City. 1767 To face page 104 

New York City. 1890 At end of volume 



NEW YORK 



CHAPTER I. 

DISCOVERY AND FIRST SETTLEMENT. 1609-1626. 

Early in September, 1609, the ship " Half-Moon " 
restlessly skirting the American coast, in the vain 
quest for a strait or other water route leading to India, 
came to the mouth of a great lonely river, flowing 
silently out from the heart of the unknown continent. 
The " Half-Moon" was a small, clumsy, high-pooped yacht, 
manned by a score of Dutch and English sea-dogs, and 
commanded by an English adventurer then in Dutch 
pay, and known to his employers as Hendrik Hudson. 
He, his craft, and his crew were all typical of the age, — 
an age fertile in adventure-loving explorers, eager to 
sail under any flag that promised glory and profit, at 
no matter what cost of hardship and danger; an age 
fertile also beyond measure in hardy seamen, of whom 
the hardiest and bravest came from England and the 
Netherlands. It was a period when the greatest deeds 
were done on the ocean by these rough heroes of cutlass 
and compass. They won honour by exploring unknown 
♦ l 



2 New York. 

seas and taking possession of and subjugating unknown 
lands, no less than by their prowess in the grim water- 
fights which have made their names immortal. Their 
small ships dared the dangers of the most distant 
oceans, and shattered the sea-might of every rival naval 
power ; and they themselves led lives of stormy peril and 
strong pleasure, and looked forward unmoved to inevi- 
table death in some one of their countless contests with 
man or with the elements. 

For a century and a quarter Spain and Portugal had 
not only taken the lead in, but had almost monopolized 
all ocean exploration and trans-oceanic settlement and 
conquest, while the most daring navigators were to be 
found in their ranks, or among the Italians who served 
both them and their rivals. Even at the beginning of 
the seventeenth century they were still the only peoples 
who had permanently occupied any portion of the New 
World ; and their vast possessions included all of tropi- 
cal, sub-tropical, and south-temperate America. But by 
this time, in a hundred fights the sea-beggars and 
sea-rovers of Holland and England had destroyed the 
cumbrous navies of the Spanish king, and won from 
those who fought for his flag the mastery of the ocean. 
Spain was still a great power; but it was a power 
whose might was waning. From the time when the 
races of middle and northern Europe first planted their 
standards in the New World they have stood toward the 
Spaniards and Spanish Americans as aggressors. Their 
blows had to be parried and returned ; sometimes they 
have been returned with good effect, but as a whole 
the Spanish people have always been on the defensive, 
fearing, not threatening, conquest. 



First Settlement, iguv-igj*,. 3 

Yet, though the career of Spain as a conquering 
power was thus cut short, two pregnant centuries 
passed by before her children lost any considerable por- 
tion of the land which she held when the ships of the 
English colonists first sighted the shores of America. 
During the early part of the seventeenth century the 
Atlantic coast from Acadia to Florida became dotted with 
the settlements of half a dozen different European na- 
tions. At irregular intervals along this extended sea- 
board the French, the English, the Dutch, the Swedes, as 
well as the Spaniards, built little forts and established 
small trading-towns. When the English had fairly be- 
gun to take root in New England and Virginia, the Dutch 
still held the Hudson, and the Swedes the mouth of the 
Delaware ; Acadia was still French, and Florida Span- 
ish. It was altogether uncertain winch one of these 
races would prove victor over the others, or whether any 
one would. There was at least a good chance that even 
the Spaniards would hold their own, and that temperate 
North America, like temperate Europe, would be held 
by many nations, differing one from the other in speech, 
in religion, and in blood. We have grown so accustomed 
to regarding America north of the Ptio Grande as the 
natural heritage of the English-speaking peoples that 
we find it hard to realize how uncertain seemed the 
prospect at the period when colonization, began. None 
could foretell which power would win in the strug- 
gle ; and the fate of America was bound up in wars 
in which her future was hardly, if at all, consid- 
ered. If Gustavus Adolphus had not fallen on the 
field of Liitzen, and had he founded, as he hoped, a great 
Scandinavian kingdom encircling the Baltic, and with. 



4 New York. 

fleets as powerful as her armies, it may well be that the 
fame and terror of the Swedish name would have 
insured peace and prosperity to the transatlantic 
Swedish colonists. Had the Dutch fleets been but a 
trifle stronger, and had the Dutch diplomats prized 
Manhattan as they prized Java, the New Netherlands 
might never have become New York. It seemed, and 
was, perfectly possible in the seventeenth century, that 
the nineteenth would see flourishing Dutch and Swedish 
states firmly seated along the Hudson and the Dela- 
ware, exactly as a thriving French commonwealth 
actually is seated along the lower St. Lawrence. 

Thus it came about that the English colonists and 
their American descendants not only had to tame a 
wild and stubborn continent, and ever to drive back 
from before their advance the doomed tribesmen of the 
forest and prairie, but also had to wrest many of the 
fairest portions of the domain which the English-speak- 
ing Americans iuherit, from the hands of other in- 
truders of European blood. Many of the cities of the 
Union bear testimony by their early history to this fact. 
Albany, Detroit, and Santa Fd are but three out of 
many towns wherein the English reaped what the 
Dutch, the French, or the Spaniards had sown. 

The history of New York deserves to be studied for 
more than one reason. It is the history of the largest 
English-speaking city which the English conquered but 
did not found, and in which though the English law 
and governmental system have ever been supreme, yet 
the bulk of the population, composed as it is and ever 
has been of many shifting strains, has never been 



First Settlement. 1609-1626. g 

English. Again, for the past hundred years, it is the 
history of a wonderfully prosperous trading-city, the 
largest in the world in which the democratic plan has 
ever been faithfully tried for so long a time ; and the 
trial, made under some exceptional advantages and 
some equally exceptional disadvantages, is of immense 
interest, alike for the measure in which it has suc- 
ceeded and for the measured which it has failed. 

Hudson, on coining to the river to which his name 
was afterward given, did not at first know that it was 
a river at all ; he believed and hoped that it was some 
great arm of the sea, that in fact it was the Northwest 
Passage to India, which he and so many other brave 
men died in vainly trying to discover. For a week he 
lay in the lower bay, and then for a day shifted his 
anchorage into what is now New York Harbour; his 
boats explored the surrounding shore-line, and found 
many Indian villages, for the neighbourhood seemed 
well peopled. The savages flocked to see the white 
strangers, and eagerly traded off their tobacco for the 
knives and beads of the Europeans. Of course occa- 
sions of quarrel were certain to arise between the rough, 
brutal sailors and the fickle, suspicious, treacherous red 
men ; and once a boat's crew was attacked by two 
canoes, laden with warriors, and a sailor was killed by 
an arrow which pierced his throat. Yet on the whole 
their relations were friendly, and the trading and bar- 
tering went on unchecked. 

Hudson soon found that he was off the mouth of a 
river, not a strait ; and he spent three weeks in explor- 
ing it, sailing up till the shoaling water warned him 



6 New York. 

that lie was at the head oi' navigation, near the pres- 
ent site of Albany. He found many small Indian 
tribes scattered along the banks, and usually kept on 
good terms with them, presenting their chiefs with 
trinkets of various kinds, and treating them for the 
first time to a taste of " fire-water," the terrible curse 
of their race ever since. In return he was well re- 
ceived when he visited the bark wigwams, his hosts 
holding feasts for him, where the dishes included not 
only wild fowl, but also fat dogs, killed by the squaws, 
and skinned with mussel shells. The Indians, who had 
made some progress in the ruder arts of agriculture, 
brought to the ship quantities of corn, beans, and pump- 
kins from the great heaps drying beside their villages ; 
and their fields, yielding so freely to even their poor 
tillage, bore witness to the fertility of the soil. Hudson 
had to be constantly on his guard against his new- 
found friends , and once he was attacked by a party 
of hostile warriors whom he beat off, killing several of 
their number. However, what far out- weighed such 
danger in the gain-greedy eyes of the trade-loving ad- 
venturers, was the fact that they saw in the possession 
of the Indians great stores of rich furs ; for the mer- 
chants of Europe prized furs as they did silks, spices, 
ivory, and precious metals. 

Having reached the head of navigation the " Half- 
Moon " turned her bluff bows southward, and drifted 
down stream with the rapid current until she once more 
reached the bay. The brilliant fall weather had been 
varied at times with misty days and nights; and during 
the " Half-Moon's " inland voyage her course had lain 
through scenery singularly wild, grand, and lonely. 



F/rst Settlement. 1609-1626. 7 

She had passed the long line of frowning, battlemented 
rock-walls that we know by the name of the Palisades ; 
she had threaded her way round the bends where the 
curving river sweeps in and out among bold peaks, 
— Storm King, Crow's Nesfc, and their brethren; she 
had sailed in front of the Catskill Mountains, per- 
haps even thus early in the season crowned with shin- 
ing snow. From her decks the lookouts scanned with 
their watchful eyes dim shadowy wastes, stretching for 
countless leagues on every hand ; for all the land 
was shrouded in one vast forest, where red hunters who 
had never seen a white face followed wild beasts, 
upon whose kind no white mau had ever gazed. 

Early in October, Hudson set out on his homeward 
voyage to Holland, where the news of his discovery 
excited much interest among the daring merchants, 
especially among those whose minds were bent on the 
fur-trade. Several of the latter sent small ships across 
to the newly found bay and river, both to barter with 
the savages and to explore and report further upon the 
country. 

The most noted of these sea-captains who followed 
Hudson, was Adrian Block, who while at anchor off 
Manhattan Island lost his vessel by fire. He at once 
set about building another, and being a man of great 
resource and resolution, succeeded. Creating every- 
thing for himself, and working in the heart of the 
primeval forest, he built and launched a forty-five- 
foot yacht which he christened the "Onrest" (the "Rest- 
less "), fit name for the bark of one of these daring, ever- 
roaming adventurers. This primitive pioneer vessel 
was the first ever launched in our waters, and her keel 



8 New York. 

was the first which ever furrowed the waters of the 
Sound. 

The first trading and exploring ships did well, and 
the merchants saw that great profits could be made from 
the Manhattan fur-trade. Accordingly, they deter- 
mined to establish permanent posts at the head of the 
river and at its mouth. The main fort was near the 
mouth of the Mohawk, but they also built a few cabins 
at the south end of Manhattan Island, and left therein 
half a dozen of their employees, with Hendrik Chris- 
tiansen as head man over both posts. The great com- 
mercial city of New York thus had its origin, not 
unfittingly, in a cluster of traders' huts. From this 
obscure beginning was to spring one of the mightiest 
cities of any age, marvellous alike for its wonderfully 
rapid growth and its splendid material prosperity. 
From the outset the new town, destined to be the 
largest in the New World, mayhap even the largest in 
all the world, took its place among those communities 
which owe their existence and growth primarily to 
commerce, their whole character and development for 
good and evil being more profoundly affected by com- 
mercial than -by any other influences. Even in its very 
founding, the direction in which the great city on 
Manhattan Island should develop was foreshadowed, 
and its course outlined in advance. 

Christiansen was soon killed by an Indian. For two 
or three years his fellow-traders lived on Manhattan Is- 
land much in the same way as men now live at the re- 
moter outposts of the fur-trade in the far northwest of 
this continent. Some kept decent and straight; others 
grew almost as squalid and savage as the red men in 



First Settlement. 1609-kjsj. 9 

whose midst they lived. They hunted, fished, and idled ; 
sometimes they killed their own game, sometimes they 
got it by barter from the Indians, together with tobacco 
and corn. Now and then they quarrelled with the sur- 
rounding savages, but generally they kept on good 
terms with them ; and in exchange for rum and trinkets 
they gathered innumerable bales of valuable furs, — 
mostly of the beaver, which swarmed in all the streams, 
but also of otter, and of the many more northern kinds, 
such as the sable and the fisher. At long intervals these 
furs were piled in the holds of the three or four small 
vessels whose yearly or half yearly arrival from Holland 
formed the chief relief to the monotony of the fur- 
traders' existence. 

The merchants who first sent over vessels and built 
a trading-post, joined with others to form the "New 
Netherland Company ; " for it was a time when settle- 
ment and conquest were undertaken more often by great 
trading companies than by either the national govern- 
ment or by individuals. The Netherlands government 
granted this company the monopoly of the fur-trade 
with the newly discovered territory for three years from 
lb 15, and renewed the grant for a year at a time until 
1621, when it was allowed to lapse, a more powerful 
competitor being in the field. The company was a 
mere trading corporation, and made no effort to really 
settle the land ; but the fur-trade proved profitable, and 
the post on Manhattan Island was continued, while an- 
other was built near the head of the Hudson, close to 
the present site of Albany. 

In 1621, the great West India Company was char- 
tered by the States-general, and given the monopoly 



io New York. 

of the American trade , and it was by this company that 
the city was really founded, the first settlement being 
made which was intended to be permanent. All the 
magnificent territory discovered by Hudson was granted 
it under the name of the Xew Netherlands. The com- 
pany was one of the three or four huge commercial 
corporations of imperial power that played no small 
part in shaping the world's destiny during the two 
centuries immediately preceding the present. It was 
in its constitution and history archetypical of the 
time. The great trading-city of America was really 
founded by no one individual, nor yet by any national 
government, but by a great trading corporation, created 
however to fight aud to bear rule no less than to carry 
on commerce. The merchants who formed the "West 
India Company were granted the right to exercise 
powers such as belong to sovereign States, because the 
task to which they set themselves was one of such in- 
credible magnitude and danger that it could be done 
only on such terms. They were soldiers and sailors no 
less than traders ; it was only merchants of iron will 
and restless daring who could reap the golden harvests 
in those perilous sea-fields, where all save the strongest 
surely perished. The patl>3 of commerce were no less 
dangerous than those of war. 

The West India Company was formed for trade, and 
for peopling the world's waste spaces : and it was also 
formed to carry on fierce Mar against the public enemy, 
the King of Spain. It made war or peace as best 
suited it ; it gave governors and judges to colonies and 
to conquered lands ; it founded cities, and built forts ; 
and it hired mighty admirals to lead to battle and 



First Settlement. 1609-16S6. 11 

plunder, the ships of its many fleets. Some of the must 
successful and heroic feats of arms in the history of the 
Netherlands were performed by the sailors in the pay 
of this company ; steel in their hands brought greater 
profit than gold; and the fortunate stockholders of 
Amsterdam and Zealand received enormous dividends 
from the sale of the spoil of the sacked cities of Brazil, 
and of the captured treasure-ships which had once 
formed part of the Spanish " silver fleet." 

In the midst of this turmoil of fighting and trading, 
the compauy had little time to think of colonizing. 
Nevertheless, in 1624 some families of protestant "Wal- 
loons were sent to the Hudson in the ship " New Neth- 
erlands a few of them staying on Manhattan Island. 
The following summer several more families arrived, 
and the city may be said to have been really founded, 
the dwellers on Manhattan Island after that date in- 
cluding permanent settlers besides the mere transient 
fur-traders. Finally in May, 1626, the director Peter 
Minuit, a Westphalian, appointed by the company as 
first governor of the colony, arrived in the harbour in his 
ship the " Sea-Mew," leading a band of true colonists, — 
men who brought with them their wives and little ones, 
their cattle and their household goods, and who settled 
down in the land with the purpose of holding it for 
themselves and for their childrens' children. 



i2 New York. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE DUTCH TOWN UNDER THE FIRST THREE DIRECTORS. 
1626-1647. 

With the arrival of Director Minuit, the settlement 
at the mouth of the Hudson first took on permanent 
form and became an organized community. He bought 
Manhattan Island from its Indian owners for the sum 
of sixty guilders, or about twenty-four dollars, and dur- 
ing the summer founded thereon a little town, chris- 
tened New Amsterdam. , It soon grew to contain some 
two hundred souls. Even at the beginning, the popu- 
lation was composed of peoples diverse in race and 
speech ; not only were there Dutchmen and Walloons, 
but also even thus early a few Huguenots, Germans, 
and Englishmen. 

The island was then- a mass of tangled, frowning 
forest, fringed with melancholy marshes, which near 
the present site of Canal Street approached so close 
together from either side that they almost made an- 
other small island of the southern end. The settlers 
staked out a fort on the southernmost point, and hud- 
dled near it in their squalid huts ; while they closely 
watched their cattle, which were in imminent danger 
from wolves, bears, and panthers whenever they strayed 
into the woodland. 

Minuit was a kindly man, of firm temper, much en- 
ergy, and considerable executive capacity ; on the whole 



Tim Dutch Town. i626-m7. 13 

he was by far the best of the four directors who suc- 
cessively ruled the city and colony during the forty 
years of the Dutch supremacy. But the scheme of 
colonization was defective in more than one vital par- 
ticular. The settlement was undertaken primarily in 
the interest of a great commercial corporation, and only 
secondarily in the interests of the settlers themselves. 
The world had not yet grasped the fact that those who 
went abroad to build mighty States in far-off lands 
ought by rights to be themselves the main beneficiaries 
of°their toil and peril. A colony was considered as 
being established chiefly for the good of the people who 
stayed at home, not for the good of the colonists. The 
West India Company wished well to its settlers, who 
were granted complete religious freedom, and in prac- 
tice a very considerable amount of civil liberty like- 
wise ; but after all, the company held that the first duty 
of the New Netherlands colony was to return large 
dividends to the company's stockholders, and especially 
to advance the worldly welfare of the company's most 
influential directors. It sought to establish a chain of 
trading-posts which should bring great wealth to the 
mother country, rather than to lay the foundations of a 
transatlantic nation of Dutch freemen. Hence, the 
settlers never felt a very fervent loyalty for the govern- 
ment under which they lived, and in its moment of 
mortal peril betrayed small inclination to risk their 
lives and property in a quarrel which was hardly their 
own. 

This attitude of the old West India Company was 
that naturally adopted by all such corporations. It 
was curiously parallelled, even in our own day, by the 



14 New York. 

way in which the great Hudson Bay Company shut 
the fertile valleys of the Bed River and the Saskatcha- 
wau to all settlement. It was a thoroughly unhealthy 
attitude. 

Minuit was active in establishing friendly relations 
with the savages. His boats explored the neighbouring 
creeks and inlets, and the Indians were well treated 
whenever they came to the little hamlet on Manhattan 
Island. In consequence they freely brought their stores 
of valuable furs for barter and sale. For two or three 
years the trade proved profitable, while, from other 
causes, the stock of the company rose to a high pre- 
mium on the exchanges of Holland. 

In 1628, for the purpose of promoting immigration, 
an act was passed granting to any man who should bring- 
over a colony of fifty souls a large tract of land and va- 
rious privileges, with the title of " Patroon." These pat- 
roons were really great feudal lords, who farmed out their 
vast estates to tenants who held the "round on various 
conditions. Their domains were often as large as old- 
world principalities ; as an instance, Rensselaerswyck, 
the property of the Patroon Van Rensselaer, was a tract 
containing a thousand square miles. The introduction 
of this very aristocratic system was another evidence 
of the unwisdom of the governing powers. Moreover, 
the patroons, whose extensive privileges were curtailed 
in certain directions, — notably in that they were for- 
bidden to enter into the lucrative fur-trade, the chief 
source of profit to the company, — soon began to rebel 
against these restrictions. They quarrelled fiercely with 
the company's representatives, arid traded on their own 
account with the Indians ; and the various private 



The Dutch Towx. W26-1647. 15 

traders not only cut into the company's profits, but 
also, being amenable to no law, soon greatly demoralized 
the savages. 

The settlers on Manhattan Island were not treated 
as freemen, but as the vassals of the company. For 
many years they were not even given any title to the 
land on which they built their houses, being considered 
simply as tenants at will. Minuit, it is true, chose 
from among them an Advisory Council, but it could 
literally only advise, and in the last resort the company 
had absolute power. The citizens had certain officers 
of their own, but they were powerless in the event of 
any struggle with the director. When the latter was, 
like Minuit, a sensible, well-disposed man, affairs went 
well enough, and the people were allowed to govern 
themselves, and were happy ; but a director of tyran- 
nous temper always had it in his power to rule the 
colony almost as if he were an absolute despot. 

For six years Minuit remained in New Amsterdam, 
ruling the people mildly, preserving by a mixture 
of tact and firmness friendly relations with the In- 
dians and with his English neighbours to the eastward, 
— to whom he sent a special embassy, which was most 
courteously received, — and keeping on good, terms with 
the powerful and haughty patroons. During these 
years the trade of the colony increased and flourished, 
rich cargoes of valuable furs being sent to Holland in 
the homeward-bound ships, and the population of Man- 
hattan Island gradually grew in numbers and wealth. 
Farms or " bouevies " were established ; and the settlers 
raised wheat, rye, buckwheat, flax, and beans, while 
their herds and flocks throve apace. The company 



1 6 New York. 

soon built a mill, a brewery, a bakery, aud great ware- 
houses, and society began to gain some of the more 
essential comforts of civilization. Nevertheless, the 
company quarrelled with Minuit. He was accused of 
unduly favouring the patroons, whose private ventures 
in the fur-trade were encroaching upon the company's 
profits, and moreover he had been drawn into a scheme 
of ship-building, which though successful, — a very large 
and fine ship being built and launched in the bay, — 
nevertheless proved much too expensive for the taste 
of his employers. Accordingly, he was recalled ; and 
later on, deeming himself to have been ill-treated, he 
took service under the Swedish queen. 

His successor was Wouter Van Twiller, who reached 
New Amsterdam early in 1633. Van Twiller was a 
good-natured, corpulent, wine-bibbing Dutchman, loose 
of life, and not over-strict in principle, and with a slow, 
irresolute mind. However, as he was an easy-going- 
man his rule did not bear hardly on the colonists, while 
he won for himself an honourable reputation by devoting 
much of his time to the construction of public buildings. 
Thus, he made a new fort of earthen banks with stone 
bastions, enclosing within its walls not only the soldiers' 
barracks, but also at first the governmental residence 
and public offices ; he also built several windmills and 
the first church which was used solely as such, as well 
as houses for the dominie and for the sellout -fiscal. 
The latter was the most important of the local officers ; 
he possessed curious and extensive powers, being the 
chief executive of the local government, and answering 
roughly to both the English sheriff and town constable, 
though with a far wider and more complicated range of 



The Dutch Town. 1626-1647. 17 

duties. The colony had at this time received two im- 
portant additions in the shape of the first school-master 

— who failed ingloriously in his vocation, and then 
tried to eke out his scanty salary by taking in washing, 

— and the first regular clergyman. The clergyman, 
Dominie Bogardus, was a man of mark and of high 
character, though his hot temper made him unpopular. 

Van Twiller kept on fairly friendly terms with the 
Indians, though causes of quarrel between the settlers 
and the savages were constantly arising. Plenty of 
wrong was done on each side, and it would be hard to 
say where the original ground of offence lay. Prob- 
ably the whites could not have avoided a war in the 
end ; but they certainly by their recklessness and bru- 
tality did all in their power to provoke the already 
suspicious and treacherous red men. The history 
of the dealings of the Dutch with the Indians is not 
pleasant reading. 

Under Van Twiller there were endless troubles with 
the English. Both England and Holland claimed the 
country from the Connecticut to the Delaware, each 
wishing it really more for purposes of trade than of 
colonization ; and the quarrels generally arose over 
efforts of rival vessels of the two nationalities to control 
the trade with some special band of savages. In Van 
Twiller's time an English vessel entered the Hudson 
and sailed to the head of navigation, where she anchored 
and began to barter with the savages for their furs ; 
whereupon the Dutch soldiers from the neighbouring 
fort fell upon her and drove her off, confiscating the 
furs. At the same time Van Twiller built a fort and 
established a garrison on the Connecticut, threatening 



[8 .V. 

to hold it b) gainst the English ; but when the 

died to make their thi 
ins from Plymouth sailed up the 
river and took possession of the banks in defiance of 
their 

Better luck attended Van TwiUer's efforts on the 
ware, the Cavaliers proving easier to deal with than 
Roundhea e Dutch had already built a colony 

on this river j but the colonists became embroiled with 
vll on thorn and massacred thorn to a 
man. Then a party of Virginians established them- 
selves in one of I md set about 
founding a settlement and trading-post ; but when the 
aews was brought to the director at v sterdara, 
be | ainst the 
invaders, who were all taken captive and brought in 
triumph i ' .]. Van T wilier hardly 
know w do with them ; so he scolded them 

[fence in trespassing 
on Dutch territory, and then shipped thorn back 
Virgil 
The internal affairs of the colony wont more smoothly. 
1 quarrels with t' e powerful 
s much I of his i 

ami rule harshly 

I the value of the trade with the 
home country on the whole increased, though it never 

the company take very i 
thong - possess wilier th 

- not an honest or faithful 
impany in matters financial; and in 
sd from his office on the 



7//a Dutch Ton wse-iew 19 

->f having diverted the moneys of Hie corporation to 
liis own privs 

II r, Wilhelm Kieft, was much the woi 

the four Dutch g< 1 "n]ik<i his predecessor, he 

industrious and temperate; but he ; : do 

talent whatever for managing men, and bad the mean, 
cruel temper of a petty despot His mercantile repu- 
tation was also none of the best; though during his 
admini itration he himself kept reasonably clear of 
financial scandals. In fact, the West India Company 
was tired of a colony which proved a drain on its rev- 
enue rather than a source of profit; and any second- 
rate Juan, who hade fair not to trouble the people at 
home, was deemed good enough to be governor of such 
an unpromising spot 

Kieft found the New Netherlands in a far from 
flourishing condition. The Dutch colonists, though 
Stubborn and resolute, woo somewhat sluggish and 
heavy tempered, without the restless energy of their far 
more numerous and ever-encroaching neighbours on the 
east (the New Englanders), and lacking the intense de- 
sire for what was almost mere adventure, which drove 
the French hither and thither through the far-off wilder- 
Population had increased hut slowly, and the town 
which huddled round the fort on the south point of 
Manhattan [aland was still little more than a collection 
of poor hovels. The Hollanders were traders and 
seafarers, and they found it hard to settle down 
into farmers, who alone can make permanent colonists. 
Moreover, at the outset they were naturally unable to 
adapt themselves to the special and peculiar needs of 
their condition. The frontier and frontier life date 



20 New York. 

back to the days when the first little struggling settle • 
merits were dotted down on the Atlantic seaboard, as 
islets in a waste of savagery ; but it always took at 
least a generation effectively to transform a European 
colonist into an American frontiersman. Thus the early 
Dutch settlers took slowly and with reluctance to that 
all-important tool and weapon of the American pioneer, 
the axe, and chopped down very little timber indeed. 
As a consequence, they lived in dugouts or cabins of 
bark and poles, lacking tire knowledge to build the log- 
huts, which always formed the first and characteristic 
dwellings of the true backwoodsmen. It was a good 
many years before the backwoods type, so characteristi- 
cally American, had opportunity to develop. 

Kieft was not well pleased with the colony, and the 
colony was still less pleased with Kieft. From the 
beginning he took the tone of a tyrant, treating the col- 
onists as his subjects. He appointed as council but 
one man, a Huguenot of good repute, named La Mon- 
tagne, and then, to prevent all danger of a tie, decreed 
that La Montague should have but one vote and he 
himself two. He then filled the different local offices 
with his own flatterers and sycophants, and proceeded 
to govern by a series of edicts, which were posted on 
the trees, bams, and fences ; some of them, such as those 
forbidding the sale of fire-arms and gunpowder to the 
Indians, were good; while great discontent was excited 
by others, such as the sumptuary laws (for he made a 
bold attempt to stop the drinking and carousing of the 
mirth-loving settlers), the establishing of a passport 
system, and the interference with private affairs by 
settling when people should go to bed, labourers go to 



The Dutch Town. i6%6-m7. 21 

work, and the like. The Dutch were essentially free 
and liberty loving, and accustomed to considerable 
self-government ; and tiie Manhattan colonists felt 
that they were unjustly discriminated against, and 
chafed under the petty tyranny to which they were 
exposed. 

However, under Kieft the appearance of the town 
was much improved. Streets began to be laid out, and 
a better class of private houses sprang up, while a new 
church and the first tavern — a great clumsy inn, the 
property of the company — were built, and the farms 
made good progress, fruit-trees being planted and fine 
cattle imported. New settlements were made on the 
banks of the Hudson and the Sound, on Staten Island, 
and on what is now the Jersey shore. The company 
made great efforts further to encourage immigration, al- 
lowing many privileges to the poorer class of immi- 
grants, and continuing, in diminished form, some of the 
exceptional a 1 vantages granted to the rich men who 
should form small colonies. The colonists received the 
right to manufacture, hitherto denied them ; but, un- 
fortunately, the hereditary privileges of the patroons 
were continued, including their right of feudal jurisdic- 
tion, and the exclusive right to hunt, fish, fowl, and 
grind corn on their vast estates. The leader in pushing 
these new settlements, and one of the most attractive 
figures in our early colonial history, was the Patroon 
de Vries, a handsome, gallant, adventurous man, of 
brave and generous nature. He was greatly beloved by 
the Indians, to whom he was always both firm and 
kind; and the settlers likewise loved and respected him, 
for he never trespassed on their rights, and was their 



22 New York. 

leader in every work of danger, whether in exploring 
strange coasts or in fronting human foes. 

Besides the Dutch immigrants, many others of differ- 
ent nationalities came in, particularly English from the 
New England colonies ; and all, upon taking the oath 
of allegiance, were treated exactly alike. There was al- 
most complete religious toleration, and hence many 
Baptists and Quakers took refuge among the Hol- 
landers, fleeing from the persecutions of the Puritans. 

All this time there was continual squabbling with 
the neighbouring and rival settlements of European 
powers. A large body of Swedes, under Minuit, arrived 
at and claimed the ownership of the mouth of the 
Delaware, bidding defiance to the threats the Dutch 
made that they would oust them ; while the English, in 
spite of many protests, took final possession of the Con- 
necticut valley and the eastern half of Long Island. 
But the distinguishing feature of Kieft's administration 
was the succession of bloody Indian struggles waged 
between 1640 and 1645. 

For these wars Kieft himself was mainly responsible, 
though the settlers and savages were already irritated 
with each other. Occasional murders and outrages were 
committed by each side. The Indians became alarmed 
at the increase in numbers of the whites, and the whites 
became tired of having a horde of lazy, filthy, cruel 
beggars always crowding into their houses, killing their 
cattle, and by their very presence threatening their fam- 
ilies. A strong and discreet man might have preserved 
peace ; but Kieft was rash, cruel, and irresolute, and 
precipitated the contest by ordering a brutal vengeance 
to be taken on the Raritan tribe for a wrong which 



The Dutch Toivw. mm-iew. 23 

they probably had not committed. They of course re- 
taliated in kind, and there followed a series of struggles, 
separated by short periods of patched-up truce. Kieft 
took care to keep shut up in the fort, away from all 
possible harm, whereat the settlers murmured greatly. 
All their wisest and best men, including the Patroon 
de Vries, the councilman La Montague, and Dominie 
Bogardus, protested against his course in bringing on 
the war. 

Early in 1643, he caused by his orders, one of the 
most horrible massacres by which our annals have ever 
been disgraced. The dreaded Mohawks had made a 
sudden foray on the River Indians, who, like the other 
neighbouring tribes, were Algonquins ; and the latter, 
fleeing in terror from their adversaries, took refuge close 
to the wooden walls of New Amsterdam, where they 
were at first kindly received. On Shrovetide night, 
Kieft, with a hideous and almost inconceivable barbar- 
ity and treachery, as short-sighted as it was cowardly, 
caused bodies of troops to fail on two parties of these 
helpless and unsuspecting fugitives, and butchered over 
a hundred. 

This inhuman outrage at once roused 'every Indian 
to take a terrible vengeance, and to wipe out his wrongs 
in fire and blood. All the tribes fell on the Dutch at 
once, and in a short time destroyed every outlying farm 
and all the smaller settlements, bringing ruin and deso- 
lation upon the entire province, while the surviving 
settlers gathered in New Amsterdam and in a few 
of the best fortified smaller villages. The Indians 
put their prisoners to death with dreadful tortures, and 
in at least one instance the Dutch retaliated in kind. 



24 New York. 

Neither side spared the women and children. The 
hemmed-in Dutch sent bands of their soldiers, assisted 
by parties of New England mercenaries, under a famous 
woodland fighter, Capt. John Underhill, against the In- 
dian towns. They were enabled to strike crippling 
blows at their enemies, because the latter foolishly 
clung to their stockaded villages, where the whites could 
surround them, keep them from breaking out by means 
of their superiority in firearms, and then set the wooden 
huts aflame and mercilessly destroy, with torch or 
bullet, all the inmates, sometimes to the number of 
several hundred souls. These Indian stockades offered 
the best means of defence against rival savages ; but 
they were no protection against the whites, who, on the 
other hand, were much inferior to the red men in battle 
in the open forest. At first the Indians did not under- 
stand this ; and in their ignorance they persisted in 
fighting their new foes in the very way that gave the 
latter most advantage. It was in consequence of this 
that the seventeenth-century Algonquins suffered not 
a few slaughtering defeats at the hands of the New 
Englanders and New Netherlanders. 

Finally, crippled and exhausted, both sides were glad 
to make peace; and the whites again spread out to their 
ruined farms. In his dire need Kieffc had summoned 
a popular meeting and chosen from among the heads 
of families a council of twelve men to advise him in 
the war. This popular meeting w T as the first of its 
kind ever held on Manhattan, and may be considered 
as the first fore-shadowing of our whole present system 
of popular government. The Council of Twelve at once 
proceeded to protest against the director's arbitrary 



The Dutch Town, leze-m?. 25 

powers, and to demand increased rights for the people, 
and a larger measure of self-government. Instantly 
Kieft dissolved thetn ; but later on, when the settle- 
ment seemed at the last gasp, a council of eight was 
chosen, this time by popular vote, and took advantage 
of the dread of the public enemy to demand the needed 
internal reforms. They protested in every way against 
Kieft's tyranny. The latter would not yield. The muti- 
nous spirit became very strong; disorder, and even 
murder took place, and affairs began to drift toward 
anarchy. Numerous petitions were sent to Holland 
asking Kieft's removal, and finally this was granted. 
The harassed colony was given a new director in the 
shape of a gallant soldier named Peter Stuyvesant, who 
arrived and took possession of his office in May, 1047. 



26 New York. 



CHAPTER III. 

STUYVESANT AND THE END OF DUTCH RULE. 1647-1664. 

Grim old Stuyvesant had lost a leg in the wars. He 
wore in its place a wooden one, laced with silver bands, 
— so that some traditions speak of it as silver. No 
other figure of Dutch, nor indeed of colonial days, is 
so well remembered ; none other has left so deep an 
impress on Manhattan history and tradition as this 
whimsical and obstinate, but brave and gallant old 
fellow, the kindly tyrant of the little colony. To this 
day he stands in a certain sense as the typical father of 
the city. There are not a few old New Yorkers who 
half-Ira morously pretend still to believe the story which 
their forefathers handed down from generation to gen- 
eration, — the story that the ghost of Peter Stuyvesant, 
the queer, kindly, self-willed old dictator, still haunts 
the city he bullied arid loved and sought to guard, and 
at night stumps to and fro, with a shadowy wooden leg, 
through the aisles of St. Mark's church, near the spot 
where his bones lie buried. 

Stuyvesant was a man of strong character, whose 
personality impressed all with whom he came in con- 
tact. In many ways he stood as a good representative 
of his class, — the well-born commercial aristocracy of 
Holland. In his own person he illustrated, only with 
marked and individual emphasis, the strong and the 



End of Dutch Rule. 1647-1664. 27 

weak sides of the rich traders, who knew how to fight 
and rule, who feared God and loved liberty, who held 
their heads high and sought to do justice according to 
their lights ; but whose lights were often dim, and 
whose understandings were often harsh and narrow. 
He was powerfully built, with haughty, clear-cut fea- 
tures and dark complexion ; and he always dressed 
with scrupulous care, in the rich costume then worn by 
the highest people in his native land. He had proved 
his courage on more than one stricken field; and lie 
knew how to show both tact and firmness in dealing 
with his foes. But he was far less successful in deal- 
ing with his friends ; and his imperious nature better 
fitted him to command a garrison than to rule over a 
settlement of Dutch freemen. It was inevitable that a 
man of his nature, who wished to act justly, but who 
was testy, passionate, and full of prejudices, should 
arouse much dislike and resentment in the breasts of 
the men over whom he held sway ; and these feelings 
were greatly intensified by his invariably acting on the 
assumption that he knew best about their interests, and 
had absolute authority to decide upon them. He 
always proceeded on the theory that it was harmful to 
allow the colonists any real measure of self-government, 
and that what was given them was given as a matter 
of grace, not as an act of right. Hence, though he was 
a just man, of sternly upright character, he utterly 
i'ailed to awaken in the hearts of the settlers any real 
loyalty to himself or to the government he represented ; 
and they felt no desire to stand by him when he needed 
their help. He showed his temper in the first speech 
he made to the citizens, when he addressed them in the 



28 New York. 

tone of an absolute ruler, and assured them that he 
would govern them " as a father does his children." 
Colonists from a land with traditions of freedom, put 
down in the midst of surroundings which quicken and 
strengthen beyond measure every impulse they may 
have in the direction of liberty, are of all human beings 
those least fitted to appreciate the benefits of even the 
best of paternal governments. 

When Stuyvesant came to Manhattan the little Dutch 
doiy thereon was just recovering from the bloody misery 
of the Indian wars. No such calamities occurred again to 
check and blast its growth ; and it may be said to have 
then fairly passed out of the mere pioneer stage. It 
was under Stuyvesant that New Amsterdam became a 
firmly established Dutch colonial town, instead of an 
Indian-harried village outpost of civilization ; and it 
was only in his time that the Dutch life took on fixed 
and definite shape. The first comers were generally 
poor adventurers ; but when it was plainly seen that 
the colony was to be permanent, many well-to-do people 
of good family came over, — burghers who were proud 
of their coats-of-arms, and traced their lineage to the 
great worthies of the ancient Netherlands. The Dutch 
formed the ruling and the most numerous class of 
inhabitants ; but then, as now, the population of the city 
was very mixed. A great many English, both from 
old and New England, had come in ; while the French 
Huguenots were still more plentiful, — and, it may be 
mentioned parenthetically, formed, as everywhere else 
in America, without exception the most valuable of all 
the immigrants. There were numbers of Walloons, 
not a few Germans, and representatives of so many 



End of Dutch Rule. 1G47-1664. 29 

other nations that no less than eighteen different 
languages and dialects were spoken in the streets. An 
ominous feature was the abundance of negro slaves, — 
uncouth and brutal-looking black savages, brought by 
slave-traders and pirates from the gold coast of Africa. 

The population was diverse in more ways than those of 
speech and race. The Europeans who came to this 
city during its first forty years of life, represented almost 
every grade of old-world society. Many of these 
pioneers were men of as high character and standing as 
ever took part in founding a new settlement ; but on 
the other hand there were plenty of others to the full as 
vicious and worthless as the worst immigrants who 
have come hither during the present century. Many 
imported bond-servants and apprentices, both English 
and Irish, of criminal or semi-criminal tendencies escaped 
to Manhattan from Virginia and New England, and, once 
here, found congenial associates from half the countries 
of continental Europe. There thus existed from the 
start a low, shiftless, evil class of whites in our popu- 
lation; while even beneath their squalid ranks lay the 
herd of brutalized black slaves. It may be questioned 
whether seventeenth-century New Amsterdam did not 
include quite as large a proportion of undesirable in- 
habitants as nineteenth-century New York. 

The sharp and strong contrasts in social position, the 
great differences in moral and material well-being, and 
the variety in race, language, and religion, all combined 
to make a deep chasm between life in New Amsterdam 
and life in the cities of New England, with their orderly 
uniformity of condition and their theocratic democracy. 

Society in the New Netherlands was distinctly aristc- 



5o New York. 

erotic* The highest rank was composed of the great 
patroons, with their feudal privileges and vast lauded 
estates; next in order came the well-to-do merchant 
burghers of the town, whose ships went to Europe and 
Africa, carrying in their holds now furs or rum, now 
ivory or slaves ; then came the great bulk of the pop- 
ulation, — thrifty souls of small means, who worked 
hard, and strove more or less successfully to live up 
to the law; while last of all came the shifting and 
intermingled strata of the evil and the weak, — the 
men of incurably immoral propensities, and the poor 
whose poverty was chronic. Life in a new country is 
hard, and puts a heavy strain on the wicked and the 
incompetent; but it offers a fair chance to all comers, 
and in the end those who deserve success are certain 
to succeed. 

It was under Stuyvesant, in 1653, that the town was 
formally incorporated as a city, with its own local sellout 
and its schepens and burgomasters, whose powers and 
duties answered roughly to those of both aldermen and 
justices. The sellouts, schepens and. burgomasters to- 
gether formed the legislative council of the city; and 
they also acted as judges, and saw to the execution of 
the laws. There was an advisory council as well. 

The struggling days of pioneer squalor were oyer, and 
iSTew Amsterdam had taken on the look of a quaint little 
Dutch seaport town, with a touch of picturesqueness 
from its wild surroundings. As there was ever menace 
of attack, not only by the^savages but by the New 
Englanders, the city needed a barrier for defence on the 
landward side ; and so, on the present site of Wall 
Street, a high, strong stockade of upright timbers, with 



End of Dutch Rule. 1047-1004.. 31 

occasional blockhouses as bastions, stretched across the 
island. Where Canal Street now is, the settlers had 
dug a canal to connect the marshes on either side of 
the neck. There were many clear pools and rivulets of 
water; on the banks of one of them the girls were 
wont to spread the house linen they had washed, and 
the path by which they walked thither gave its name 
to the street that is yet called Maiden Lane. Manhat- 
tan Island was still, for the most part, a tangled wilder- 
ness. The wolves wrought such havoc among the cattle, 
as they grazed loose in the woods, that a special reward 
was given for their scalps, if taken on the island. 

The hall of justice was in the stadt-huys, a great 
stone building, before which stood the high "allows 
whereon malefactors were executed. Stuyvesant's own 
roomy and picturesque house was likewise of stone, and 
was known far and near as the Whitehall, finally giving 
its name to the street on which it stood. The poorest 
people lived in huts on the outskirts ; but the houses 
that lined the streets of the town itself were of neat and 
respectable appearance, being made of wood, their gable 
ends checkered with little black and yellow bricks, their 
roofs covered with tiles or shingles and surmounted by 
weather-cocks, and the doors adorned with burnished 
brass knockers. The shops, wherein were sold not only 
groceries, hardware, and the like, but also every kind of 
rich stuff brought from the wealthy cities of Holland, 
occupied generally the ground floors of the houses. 
There was a large, bare church, a good public-school 
house, and a great tavern, with neatly sanded floor, and 
heavy chairs and tables, the beds being made in cup- 
boards in the thick walls ; and here and there windmills 



32 New York. 

thrust their arms into the air, while the half-moon 
of wharves jutted out into the river. 

The houses of the rich were quaint and comfort- 
able, with steeply sloping roofs and crow-step gables. 
A wide hall led through the middle, from door to 
door, with rooms on either side. Evervthing was 
solid and substantial, from the huge, canopied, four- 
post bedstead and the cumbrous cabinets, chairs, tables, 
stools, and settees, to the stores of massive silver plate, 
each piece a rich heirloom, engraved with the coat-of- 
arms of the owner. There were rugs on the floors, and 
curtains and leather hangings on the walls ; and there 
were tall eight-day clocks, and stiff ancestral portraits. 
Clumsy carriages, and fat geldings to draw them, stood 
in a few of the stables \ and the trim gardens were filled 
with shrubbery, fruit-trees,' and a wealth of flowers, laid 
out in prim, sweet-smelling beds, divided by neatly kept 
paths. 

The poorer people were clad, — the men in blouses or 
in jackets, and in wide, baggy breeches; the women in 
bodices and short skirts. The schepens and other func- 
tionaries wore their black gowns of office. The gentry 
wore the same rich raiment as did their brethren of the 
Old World. Both ladies and gentlemen had clothes of 
every stuff and color ; the former, with their hair frizzed 
and powdered, and their persons bedecked with jewelry, 
their gowns open in front to show the rich petticoats, 
their feet thrust into high-heeled shoes, and with silk 
hoods instead of bonnets. The long coats of the gentle- 
men were finished with silver lace and silver buttons, 
as were their velvet doublets, and they wore knee- 
breeches, black silk stockings, and low shoes with silver 



End of Dutch Rule. 1647-1664. 33 

buckles. They were fond of free and joyous living; they 
caroused often, drinking deeply and eating heavily; and 
the young men and maidens loved dancing parties, pic- 
nics, and long sleigh rides in winter. There were great 
festivals, as at Christmas and New Year's. On the latter 
day every man called on all his friends ; and the former 
was then, as now, the chief day of the year for the chil- 
dren, devoted to the special service of Santa Claus. 

All through Stuyvesant's time there was constant 
danger of trouble with the Indians. Men were occasion- 
ally killed on both sides ; and once a burgher was slain 
in the streets of the town by a party of red warriors. 
There were even one or two ferocious local uprisings. 
By a mixture of tact and firmness, however, Stuyvesant 
kept the savages under partial control, checked the 
brutal and outrage-loving portion of his own people, and 
prevented any important or far-reaching outbreak. Yet 
he found it necessary to organize more than one campaign 
against the red men ; and these, though barren of excit- 
ing incident, were invariably successful, thanks to his 
indomitable energy. By the exercise of similar quali- 
ties, he also kept the ever-encroaching New Englanders 
at bay; while in 1655 he finished the long bickerings 
with the Swedes at the mouth of the Delaware by march- 
ing a large force thither, capturing their forts, and defi- 
nitely taking possession of the country, — thereby putting 
an end to all chance for the establishment of a Scandi- 
navian State on American soil. Once the New England- 
ers on Long Island began to plan a revolt; but he 
promptly seized their ringleaders, — including the In- 
dian fighter, Underhill, — fined, imprisoned, or banished 
them, and secured temporary tranquillity. 



34 New York. 

From the outset, Stuyvesant's imperious nature kept 
him embroiled with the colonists. In some respects this 
was well for the commonwealth, for in this way he finally 
curbed the feudal insolence of the patroons, after nearly 
coming to a civil war with the patroon of Kensselaers- 
wyck ; but generally he managed merely to harass and 
worry the settlers until they became so irritated as to be 
almost mutinous. He struggled hard, nut only to retain 
his own power as dictator, but to establish an aristo- 
cratic framework for the young society. With this end 
in view, he endeavoured to introduce as a permanent fea- 
ture the division of the burghers into two classes, minor 
and major, — the major burghers' rights being hered- 
itary, and giving many privileges, among others the sole 
right to hold office. He failed ignominiously in this, 
for the democratic instincts of the people, and the demo- 
cratic tendencies of their surroundings, proved too strong 
for him. He himself strove to be just toward all men ; 
but he chose his personal representatives and agents 
without paying the least heed to the popular estimate in 
which they were held. In consequence, some of those 
most obsequious to him turned out mere profligate, 
petty tyrants, to whom, nevertheless, he clung obsti- 
nately, in spite of all complaints, until they had thor- 
oughly disgusted the people at large. He threw his 
political opponents into jail without trial, or banished 
them after a trial in which he himself sat as the judge, 
announcing that he deemed it treason to complain of 
the chief magistrate, whether with or without cause ; 
and this naturally threw into a perfect ferment the 
citizens of the popular party, who were striving for 
more freedom with an obstinacy as great as his own. 



Exo of Dutch Rule. 1647-1664. 35 

Abandoning the policy of complete religious toleration, 
he not only persecuted the Baptists and Quakers, but 
even the Lutherans also. He established impost and 
excise duties by proclamation, drawing forth a most 
determined popular protest against taxation without 
representation. When the city charter was granted, he 
proceeded to appoint the first schout, schepen, and burgo- 
masters who took office under it, instead of allowing 
them to be elected by the citizens, — though this conces- 
sion was afterward wrung from him. He was in per- 
petual conflict with the council, — the "Nine Men," as 
they were termed, — who stood up stoutly for the popular 
rights, and sent memorial after memorial to Holland, 
protesting against the course that was being pursued. 
The inhabitants also joined in public meetings, and in 
other popular manifestations, to denounce the author of 
their grievances; the Dutch settlers, for the nonce, 
making common cause with their turbulent New Eng- 
land neighbors of the city and of Long Island. Stuy- 
vesant himself sent counter protests ; and also made 
repeated demands for more men and more money, that 
lie might put into good condition the crumbling and ill- 
manned fortifications, which, as lie wrote home, would 
be of no avail at all to resist any strong attac 
might be made by the ever-threatening English 
the home government cared for its colonies 
because they were profitable. This Stuyvesaut 
ince was not ; and so, with dull apathy, the app 
help were disregarded, and the director and t 
nists were left to settle their quarrels as be, 
might. 

Thus, with ceaseless wrancdinc:, with much 




2,6 New York. 

tyranny on the one hand, and much of sullen grumbling 
and discontent on the other, the years went by. Stuy- 
vesant rarely -did serious injustice to any particular man, 
and by his energy, resolution, and executive capacity he 
preserved order at home, while the colony grew and pros- 
pered as it never had done before ; but the sturdy and 
resolute, though somewhat heavy, freemen over whom 
he ruled, resented bitterly all his overbearing ways and 
his deeds of small oppression, and felt only a lukewarm 
loyalty to a government that evidently deemed them 
valuable only in so far as they added to the wealth of 
the men who had stayed at home. When the hour of 
trial came, they naturally showed an almost apathetic 
indifference to the overthrow of the rule of Holland. 

Whenever the English and Dutch were at war, New 
Amsterdam was in a flutter over the always-dreaded 
attack of some English squadron. At last, in 1664, 
the blow really fell. There was peace at the time 
between the two nations ; but this fact did not deter 
the England of the Stuarts from seizing so helpless 
a prize as the province of the New Netherlands. The 
English Government knew well how defenceless the 
country was ; and the king and his ministers de- 
termined to take it by a sudden stroke of perfectly 
cold-blooded treachery, making all their preparations 
in secret, and meanwhile doing everything they could 
to deceive the friendly power at which the blow was 
aimed. Stuyvesant had continued without cessation 
to beseech the home government that he might be 
given the means to defend the province ; but his ap- 
peals were unheeded by his profit-loving, money-getting 
superiors in Holland. He was left with insignificant 



End of Dutch Rule. 1647-1664. 37 

defences, guarded by an utterly insufficient force of 
troops. The unblushing treachery and deceit by which 
the English took the city made the victory of small 
credit to them ; but the Dutch, by their supine, short- 
sighted selfishness and greed, were put in an even less 
enviable light. 

In September, 1664, three or four English frigates, 
and a force of several hundred land-troops under Col. 
Richard Nicolls suddenly appeared in the harbour. 
They were speedily joined by the levies of the already 
insurgent New Englanders of Long Island. Nicolls 
had an overpowering force, and was known to be a 
man of decision. He forthwith demanded the imme- 
diate surrender of the city and province. Stuyvesant 
wished to fight, even against such odds; but the citi- 
zens refused to stand by him, and New Amsterdam 
passed into the hands of the English without a gun 
bein^ fired in its defence. 



38 New York. 



CHAPTER IV. 

NEW AMSTERDAM BECOMES NEW YORK. THE BEGINNING 
Of ENGLISH RULE. 1664-1674. 

The expedition against New Amsterdam had been or- 
ganized with the Duke of York, afterward King James 
II., as its special patron, and the city was rechris- 
tened in his honour. To this day its name perpetuates 
the memory of the dull, cruel bigot with whose short 
reign came to a close the ignoble line of the Stuart 
kings. 

With Manhattan Island all the province of the New 
Netherlands passed under the English rule; and the 
arrogant red flag fluttered without a rival along the 
whole seaboard from Acadia to Florida. Yet the set- 
tlements were still merely little dots in the vast wooded 
wilderness which covered all the known portions of the 
continent. They were strung at wide intervals along 
the seacoast, or the courses of the mighty rivers, sepa- 
rated one from another by the endless stretches of 
gloomy, Indian-haunted woodland. Every step in the 
forest was fraught with danger. The farms still lay 
close to the scattered hamlets, and the latter in turn 
clung to the edges of the navigable waters, where travel 
was so much easier and safer than on land. New 
Amsterdam, when its existence as such ceased, held 
some fifteen hundred souls (many of them negro slaves) ; 
yet the sloops that plied from thence to Fort Orange, — 



Beginning of English Rule. i664-i&74- 39 

now Albany, — or to any other of the small river towns, 
were obliged to go well armed, and to keep a keen 
watch night and day for the war-canoes of hostile 
Indians. 

The conquered province had been patented to the 
Duke of York, and Nicolls acted as his agent. The 
latter was a brave, politic man of generous nature and 
good character, and he executed well the difficult task 
allotted him, doing his best to conciliate the colonists 
by the justice and consideration with which he acted, 
and at the same time showing that timidity had no 
share in influencing his course. By the terms of the 
surrender the Dutch settlers were guaranteed their full 
civil and religious rights, and as a matter of fact they 
were gainers rather than losers by the change. Their 
interests were as carefully guarded as were those of the 
English settlers, their prejudices were not shocked, and 
if anything they were allowed greater, rather than less 
privileges in the way of self-government. Moreover, 
it must be remembered that the change was not so 
violent as if a city peopled exclusively by one race had 
been suddenly conquered by the members of another. 
Under Dutch rule all foreigners had been freely natu- 
ralized, and had been allowed to do their share of ad- 
ministration, — for our city has always allowed every 
privilege to that portion of her citizens (generally the 
majority) born without her limits. The Dutch element 
was largest among the. wealthy people, to whom fell 
the duty of exercising such self-government as there 
was ; but there were also plenty of rich men among 
the French Huguenots and English settlers. It is prob- 
able that at least a third of the population, exclusive of 



40 New York. 

the numerous negro slaves, and inclusive of the Hugue- 
nots was neither Dutch nor English ; and to this third 
the change was of little moment. The English had 
exercised considerable influence in the government 
throughout Stuyvesant's rule, and even before, ranking 
as third in numbers and importance among the various 
elements of the composite population ; while on the 
other hand the Dutch continued, even after the sur- 
render, to have a very great and often a preponderant 
weight in the councils of the city. The change was 
merely that, in a population composed of several distinct 
elements, the one which had hitherto been of primary 
became on the whole of secondary importance; its place. 
in the lead being usurped by another element, which 
itself had already for many years occupied a position 
of much prominence. There' was of course a good deal 
of race-prejudice and rancour; and the stubborn Dutch 
clung to their language, though with steadily loosening 
grasp, for over a century. But the lines of cleavage in 
the political contests did not follow those of speech and 
blood. The constitution of the Dutch settlement was 
essentially aristocratic ; and the party of the populace 
was naturally opposed to the party of the patroons and 
the rich merchants. The settlers who came from Eng- 
land direct, belonged to the essentially aristocratic Es- 
tablished Church. They furnished many of the great 
officials; and many of the merchants, and of those who 
became large land-owners, sprang from among them. 
These naturally joined the aristocratic section of the 
original settlers. On the other hand the New Engend- 
ers, who were of Puritan blood, — and later on the 
Presbyterians of Scotland and Ireland, — were the 



Beginning of English Rule. 1664-1674. 41 

stanchest opponents of Episcopacy and aristocracy, and 
became the leaders of the popular party. Similarly, 
the Huguenots and the settlers of other nationality 
separated (though much less sharply) on lines of 
property and caste ; and hence the fluctuating line 
which divided the two camps or factions was only 
secondarily influenced by considerations of speech and 
nationality. 

Nieolls made the necessary changes with cautious 
slowness and tact. Fur nearly a year the city was 
suffered to retain its old form of government ; then 
the schout, schepens, and burgomasters were changed 
for sheriff, aldermen, mayor, and justices. Vested rights 
were interfered with as little as possible ; the patroons 
were turned into manorial lords ; the Dutch and 
Huguenots were allowed the free exercise of their re- 
ligion ; indeed, the feeling was so friendly that for some 
time the Anglican service was held in the Dutch 
Church in the afternoons. No attempt was made to 
interfere with the language or with the social and busi- 
ness customs and relations of the citizens. Nicolls 
showed himself far more liberal than Stuyvesant in 
questions of creed ; and one of the first things he did 
was to allow the Lutherans to build a church and install 
therein a pastor of their own. He established a fairly 
good system of justice, including trial by jury, and 
practically granted the citizens a considerable measure 
of self-government. But the fact remained that the 
colony had not gained its freedom by changing its 
condition ; it had simply exchanged the rule of a com- 
pany for the rule of a duke. Nicolls himself nominated 
all the new officers of the city (choosing them from 



42 New York. 

among both the Dutch and the English), and returning 
a polite but firm negative to the request of the citizens 
that they might themselves elect their representatives. 
lie pursued the same course with the Puritan Long 
Islanders; and the latter resented his action even more 
bitterly than did the Dutch. 

However, his tact, generosity, and unfailing good 
temper, and the skill with which he kept order and 
secured prosperity endeared him to the colonists, even 
though they did at times just realize that there was an 
iron hand beneath the velvet glove. He completely 
pacified the Indians, who dining his term of command 
remained almost absolutely tranquil, for the first time 
in a quarter of a century. He put down all criminals, 
and sternly repressed the , licentiousness of his own 
soldiery, forcing them to behave well to the citizens. 
His honesty in financial matters was so great that lie 
actually impoverished himself during his administration 
of the province. Meanwhile, the city flourished ; for 
there was free trade with England and the English 
possessions, and even for some time a restricted right 
to trade with certain of the Dutch ports. 

Nicolls soon wearied of his position, and sought 
leave to resign ; but he was too valuable a servant for 
the duke to permit this until the war with Holland, 
which had been largely brought on by the treacherous 
seizure of New Amsterdam, at length came to a close. 
The Peace of Breda left New York in the hands of 
the English ; for the cold northern province, where 
now are States already far more populous than Hol- 
land, or than the England of that day, was then 
considered of less value than any one of half a dozen 



Beginning of English Rule. 1664-1674. 43 

tropical colonies. On both sides the combatants warred 
for the purpose of getting possessions which should 
benefit their own pockets, not to found States of free 
men of their own race ; they sought to establish trading- 
posts from whence to bring spices and jewels and prec- 
ious metals, rather than to plant commonwealths of 
their children on the continents that were waiting to 
be conquered. The English were inclined to grumble, 
and the Dutch to rejoice, because the former received 
New York rather than Surinam. As for Nicolls, when 
his hands were; thus freed he relurned home, having 
shown himself a warm friend to the colonists, espe- 
cially the Dutch, who greatly mourned his going. 

His successor was an archetypical cavalier named 
fYancis Lovelace. He had stood loyally by the king 
in disaster and prosperity alike, and was a gallant, 
generous, and honest gentleman; but he possessed far 
less executive capacity than his predecessor. However, 
he trod in the footsteps of the latter so far as he could, 
and strove to advance the interests of the city in every 
way, and to conciliate the good-will of the inhabitants. 
He associated on intimate terms with the leading citi- 
zens, whether English, French, or Dutch, and established 
a social club which met at their different houses, — all 
three languages being spoken at the meetings. Being 
fond of racing, he gave prizes to be run for by swift 
horses on the Long Island race-course 1 . Like his pred- 
ecessor, his chief troubles were with the hard-headed 
and stiff-necked children of the Puritans on Lon<>- Is- 
land. When he attempted to tax them to build up the 
fort on Manhattan, they stoutly refused, and sent him 
an indignant protest; while on the other hand he was 



44 New York. 

warmly supported by his Dutch and English council- 
lors in New York. With the Indians he kept on 
good terms. 

The city prospered under Lovelace as it had pros- 
pered under Nicolls. Its proprietor, the Duke of York, 
wns a mean and foolish tyrant ; but it was for his inter- 
est while he was not king to treat his colony well. 
Though an intolerant religious bigot, he yet became 
perforce an advocate of religious tolerance for New 
York, because his own creed, Roman Catholicism, was 
weak, and the hope of the feeble never rests in persecu- 
tion. New York was thus permitted to grow in peace, 
and to take advantage of her great natural resources. 
Trade increased and ships were built ; while in addi- 
tion to commerce, many of the seafaring folk took to 
the cod and whale fisheries, which had just been started 
off the coasts. The whales were very plentiful, and 
indeed several were killed in the harbour itself. The 
merchants began to hold weekly meetings, thus laying 
the foundation for the New York Exchange ; and wealth 
increased among all classes, bringing comfort, and even 
some attempt at luxury, in its train. 

This quick and steady growth in material prosperity 
was rudely checked by the fierce war which again broke 
out between England and Holland. Commerce was 
nearly paralyzed by the depredations of the privateers, 
and many of the merchants were brought to the verge 
of bankruptcy, while the public distress was widespread. 
It was known that the Dutch meditated an effort to re- 
capture the city ; and Lovelace made what preparations 
he could for defence. He busied himself greatly to es- 
tablish a regular mail to Boston and Hartford, so that 



Beginning of English Rule. 1664-1674. 45 

there might be overland communication with his eastern 
neighbours; and it was on one of his absences in New 
England that the city was recaptured by its former 
owners. 

In July, 1673, a Dutch squadron under two grim old 
sea-dogs, Admirals Evertseu and Binckes, suddenly ap- 
peared in the lower bay. The English commander in 
the fort endeavoured to treat with them ; but they would 
hearken to no terms save immediate surrender, saying 
that " they had come for their own, and their own they 
would have." The Dutch militia would not fight against 
their countrymen ; and the other citizens were not 
inclined to run any risk in a contest that concerned 
them but little. Evertsen's frigates sailed up to within 
musket-shot of the fort, and firing began on both sides. 
After receiving a couple of broadsides which killed and 
wounded several of the garrison, the English flag was 
struck, and the fort was surrendered to the Dutch troops, 
who had already landed, under the command of Capt. 
Anthony Colve. So ended the first nine years of English 
supremacy at the mouth of the Hudson. 

The victors at once proceeded to undo the work of 
the men they had ousted. Dutch was once more made 
the formal official language (though it had never been 
completely abandoned), and the whole scheme of the 
English government was overturned. In the city itself 
the schepens, burgomasters, and schout again took the 
place of sheriff, mayor, and aldermen. There was very 
little violence, although one or two houses were plun- 
dered, and a citizen here and there insulted or slightly 
maltreated by the soldiers, — much as had happened 
after the original conquest, with the important excep- 



46 New York. 

tion that it was now the Dutch who did the maltreating 
and the English who were the sufferers. 

When the province was lost it was a mere proprietary 
colony of the West India Company ; but this corpora- 
tion had died prior to 1G73, and the province was 
regained by the victory of a national Dutch force, and 
was held for the whole nation. Evertsen, acting for the 
home government, made Colve the director of the 
province. Colve was a rough, imperious, resolute man, 
a good soldier, but with no very great regard for civil 
liberty. The whole province was speedily reduced. 
The Dutch towns along the Hudson submitted gladly ; 
but the Puritan villages on Long Island were sullen and 
showed symptoms of defiance, appealing to Connecticut 
for help. However, Colve, and Evertsen, hacked up by 
trained soldiers and a well-equipped squadron, were not 
men to be trifled with. They gave notice to the Long 
Islanders that unless they were prepared to stand the 
chances of war they must submit at once ; and submit 
they did, Connecticut not daring to interfere. The New 
Englanders had been willing enough to bid defiance to, 
and to threaten the conquest of, the New Netherlands 
while the province was weakly held by an insufficient 
force; but they were too prudent to provoke a contest 
with men of such fighting temper and undoubted capa- 
city as Evertsen and Colve, and the war-hardened troops 
and seamen who obeyed their behests. 

Colve ruled the internal affairs of the colony with 
a high hand. He made the citizens understand that 
the military power was supreme over the civil; and 
when the council protested against anything he did, he 
told them plainly that unless they submitted he would 



Beginning of English Rule. 1064-1074. 47 

summarily dismiss them and appoint others in their 
places. Military law was established, and heavy taxes 
were imposed ; moreover, as the taxes took some time to 
collect, those who were most heavily assessed were 
forced to make loans in advance. Altogether the 
burghers probably failed to find that the restoration 
of Dutch rule worked any very marked change in 
their favour. 

This second period of Dutch supremacy on Manhat- 
tan Island lasted for but a year and a quarter. Then in 
November, l£74, the city was again given up to the 
English in accordance with the terms of peace between 
the belligerent powers, which provided for the mutual 
restitution of all conquered territory. With this second 
transfer New Amsterdam definitely assumed the name 
of New York ; and the province became simply one of 
the English colonies in America, remaining such until, a 
century afterward, all those colonies combined to throw 
off the yoke of the mother country and become an inde- 
pendent nation. 

Thus the province of the New Netherlands had been 
first taken by the English by an attack in time of peace, 
when no resistance could be made, and had been left in 
their possession because it was deemed of infinitely less 
consequence than such colonies as Java and Surinam ; 
it had then been reconquered by the Dutch, in fair and 
open war, and had been again surrendered because of 
an agreement into which the home government was 
forced, owing to the phases which the European 
struggle had assumed. The citizens throughout these 
changes played but a secondary part, the fate of the 
city and province being decided, not by them, but by 



48 New York. 

the ships and troops of Holland and England. Nor 
were the burghers as a whole seriously affected in their 
civil, religious, or social liberties by the changes. The 
Dutch and English doubtless suffered in turn from 
certain heartburnings and jealousies, as they alternately 
took the lead in managing the local government; but 
the grievances of the under-party were really mainly 
sentimental, for on the one hand no material dis- 
crimination was ever actually made against either 
element, and on the other hand the ruler for the time 
being, whether Dutch direcktor or English governor, 
always made both elements feel that compared to him 
they stood on a common plane of political inferiority. 

Sir Edmund Andros was appointed by the English 
king as the governor who was to receive New York 
from the hands of Director Colve. This he did formally 
and in state, many courtesies being exchanged between 
the outgoing and incoming rulers ; among the rest, 
Colve presented Andros with his own state-coach and 
the three horses that drew it. Andros at once rein- 
stated the English form of government in both province 
and city, and once more, and this time finally, made 
the English the official language. New York was still 
considered as a proprietary colony of James ; New Jersey 
was severed from it, and became a distinct province. 
The city itself, which had numbered some fifteen hun- 
dred inhabitants at the date of the original conquest 
from the Dutch, included about three thousand when 
English rule was for the second time established. 



Under the Stuarts. ig?4-i6ss. 49 



CHAPTER V. 

NEW YORK UNDER THE STUARTS. 1674-1688. 

Axdros was a man of ability and energy, anxious to 
serve his master the duke, and also anxious to serve 
the duke's colony, in so far as its interests did not clash 
with those of the duke himself. He was of course 
a devoted adherent of the House of Stuart, an ardent 
royalist, and a believer in the divine right of kings, 
and in government by a limited ruling class, not 
by the great mass of the people governed. Yet, in spite 
of his imperious and fiery temper, he strove on the 
whole to do justice to the city of mixed nationalities 
over whose destinies he for the time being presided, and 
it throve well under his care. But though he tried to 
rule fairly, he made it distinctly understood that he, 
acting in the name of his over-lord the duke, was the 
real and supreme master. The city did not govern 
itself; for he appointed the mayor, aldermen, and other 
officers. Even some of his decrees which worked well 
for the city showed the arbitrary character of his rule, 
and illustrated the vicious system of monopolies and 
class and sectional legislation which then obtained. 
Thus he bestowed on New York the sole right to bolt 
and export flour. This trebled her wealth during the 
sixteen years that elapsed before it was repealed, but 
it of course caused great hardship to the inland towns. 

4 



50 New York. 

Unmixed good however resulted from his decree put- 
ting an end to the practice of holding Indians as 
slaves. 

It might have been expected that after the conquest 
of New York the incoming English would have been 
divided by party lines from the Dutch, and that they 
would have been in strong alliance with their English 
neighbours to the eastward. The extreme royalist tone 
of the new government, and the* anti-Puritan or 
Episcopal feeling of the most influential of the new set- 
tlers, were among the main causes which prevented 
either of these results from being brought about. The 
English Episcopalians and Eoyalists hated their sour, 
gloomy, fanatical countrymen of different belief much 
more bitterly than they did their well-to-do Dutch 
neighbours ; and the middle-class citizens, Dutch and 
English alike, were bound together by ties of interest 
and by the stubborn love of liberty which was common 
to both races. 

The high-handed proceedings of Audros roused more 
or less openly avowed ill feeling among the poor but 
independent citizens of all nationalities ; and he clashed 
rather less with the Manhattaners than with the Long 
Islanders. Moreover, under his rule New York's at- 
titude as regards the. Puritan commonwealths of New 
England continued as hostile as ever, Andros adopting 
toward them the exact tone of his Dutch predecessors. 
He asserted the right of his colony to all land west of 
the Connecticut. He actually assembled a large body 
of troops wherewith to subdue the New England towns 
on its bauks, and only halted when it became evident 
that such a proceeding would without fail be despe- 



Under the Stl t arts. 1674-1688. 51 

rately resisted, and would surely bring on an inter- 
colonial war. 

Andros was certainly true to his master ; yet James 
became suspicious of him, and, after he had been gov- 
ernor for over six years, suddenly summoned, him home, 
and sent over a special agent, or spy, to examine into 
the affairs of the colony. Early in January, 1681, An- 
dros left for Loudon, where he speedily cleared his 
name of all suspicion, and came into high favour once 
more. New York meanwhile was left under the charge 
of Lieutenant-Governor Brockholls, a Roman Catholic, 
and of course a high Tory, — an inefficient man, utterly 
unable to cope with the situation. He was hampered 
rather than aided by the duke's special agents, who 
bungled everything, and soon became the laughing- 
stock of the population. In consequence, the province 
speedily fell into a condition not very far removed from 
anarchy. The traders refused to pay customs duties, 
and Brockholls was too timid to try to collect them ; 
and the taxes, generally, fell into arrears. Disorderly 
meetings were held in various places, and mob violence 
was threatened, — the Puritan element of course taking 
the lead. Equally of course, and very properly, the 
friends of free government took advantage of the con- 
fusion to strike a blow for greater liberty. When un- 
der a despotic rule which nevertheless secured order 
and material prosperity, there was small hope of effect- 
ing a change ; but the instant the tyrant for the time 
being became weak, there was a chance of success in 
moving against him, there being no longer, to the minds 
of the citizens, any substantial offset to atone for his 
tyranny. Accordingly, a New York jury formally pre- 



52 New York. 

seated to the court that the lack of a Provincial As- 
sembly was a grievance. Popular feeling declared 
itself so strongly to this effect that the court adopted 
the same view. Accordingly, it accepted as its own 
anil forwarded to the duke a petition drawn up by the 
high sheriff of Long Island. This petition set forth 
that New York had long groaned under the intolerable 
burden of being subjected to an arbitrary and irrespon- 
sible government, whereby the colonists were forced 
against their wills to pay revenue, while their trade was 
burdened, and they themselves practically enthralled. 
The document pointed by way of contrast to the freer 
and more flourishing colonies by which New York was 
flanked on either hand, and besought that thereafter 
the province should be ruled by a governor, council, and 
assembly, the latter to be elected by the colonial free- 
holders. 

The stoppage of the collections of taxes caused the 
colony to become a drain instead of a source of revenue 
to James; and the duke seriously considered the pro- 
ject of selling such an unproductive province. Finally 
however he decided, as an alternative, to grant the 
wished-for franchise, and see if that would improve 
matters ; being, it is said, advised to take this course 
by William Penn, whose not over-creditable connection 
with the Stuarts occasionally bore good fruit. As the 
person to put his plans into execution and to act as 
first governor under the new system, the duke chose 
Thomas Dongan, a Roman Catholic Irish gentleman of 
good family, the nephew of the Earl of Tyrconnel. 
Dongan acted with wise liberality, both in matters 
political and in matters religious, toward the province 



Under the Stuarts. 1674-1688. 53 

he was sent to govern ; for lie was a man of high char- 
acter and good capacity. Yet it is impossible to say 
how much of his liberality was due to honest conviction, 
and how much to the considerations of expediency that 
at the moment influenced the House of Stuart. It was 
an age of religious intolerance and of government by 
privileged classes ; and the religion to which Dongan and 
his royal master adhered was at that time, wherever it 
was dominant, the bitterest foe of civil and religious 
liberty. But in England the nation generally was 
Episcopalian ; and Duke James, a Catholic, was perforce 
obliged to advocate toleration for all sects as a step 
toward the ultimate supremacy of his own. So in 
New York, Dongan the Catholic found himself ruler of 
a province where there were but a few dozen citizens 
of his own faith, the mass of the people being stanch 
Protestants, of several jarring creeds; and he was not 
drawn by any special bonds of sympathy to the class of 
crown officials and the like, who were mostly of the very 
church which in England was supreme over his own. 
His interests and sympathies thus naturally inclined 
him to side with the popular party, and to advocate 
religious liberty. As he was also vigilant in preserving- 
order and warding off outside aggressiou, and devoted 
to the well-being of the colony, he proved himself per- 
haps the best colonial governor New York ever had. 

Dongan reached New York in 1G83, and from the 
first was popular with the colonists. He at once issued 
writs for the election of the members of the long-desired 
Provincial Assembly. They were elected by the free- 
holders ; and with their meeting, in the fall of the same 
year, the province took the first real step, — and a very 



54 New York. 

long one, — toward self-government. Dongan of course 
appointed his own council ; and he generally placed 
thereon representatives of the different nationalities and 
creeds. New York City "was of course the governmental 
seat or capital, as well as the metropolis of the province. 

The Assembly, the popular branch of the govern- 
ment, consisted of eighteen members, the majority being 
Dutch. They promptly passed a number of acts, all of 
which were approved by Dongan and his council. By 
far the most important, was the special " charter of 
Liberties and Privileges," granted by the duke to the 
province. By this the right of self-taxation was re- 
served to the colonists, except that certain specific 
duties on importations were allowed to the duke and 
his heirs. The main features of self-government, so 
long and earnestly desired by the people, w T ere also 
secured ; and entire liberty of conscience and religion 
was guaranteed to all. This charter was sent over to 
the duke, by whose suggestion several small amend- 
ments were made therein ; he then signed and sealed 
but did not deliver it. Thus it never formally went into 
effect ; yet the government of New York was carried 
on under its provisions for several years. 

One of the acts of this first Assembly was well in 
line with the policy of extreme liberality toward all 
foreign-born citizens which New York has always con- 
sistently followed: it conferred full rights of citizenship 
upon all white foreigners who should take the oath of 
allegiance. The especial purpose of passing the act 
was to benefit the Huguenots, who were being expelled 
from France by tens of thousands, thanks to the cruel 
bigotry of the French king, Louis XIV. 



Under the Stuarts. 1674.-1688. 55 

With the return of order and the dawn of liberty, 
the city once more began to flourish. Trade increased, 
the fisheries did well, new buildings were put up, and 
taxes were paid without grumbling. Addresses of grati- 
tude were sent to the duke, and the citizens were fer- 
vent in their praise of Dongan. Even the religious 
animosities were for the moment softened. The old 
church in the fort was used every Sunday by the repre- 
sentatives of all three of the leading creeds, the services 
being held in as many different languages, — the Dutch 
in the morning, the French at mid-day, and the English, 
by the Episcopalians, in the afternoon ; while Dongan and 
his few fellow-religionists worshipped in a little chapel. 
Even the austere Calvinist dominies could not refrain 
from paying their meed of respect to the new governor. 

As soon as the Assembly adjourned, Dongan granted 
new " liberties and privileges " to the city itself. In 
accordance with these new articles, the aldermen were 
elected by the freeholders in the various wards, the 
mayor being appointed by the governor. The board of 
aldermen was a real, not (as in our day) a nominal, 
legislative body, and enacted by-laws for the govern- 
ment of the city. Some of them were of very stringent 
character; notably those which provided against any 
kind of work or amusement on the Sabbath, and which 
forbade all assemblages of the numerous negro slaves, — 
for the slave-holding burghers were haunted by the 
constant terror of a servile insurrection. 

Affairs went on smoothly until the death of Charles II. 
and the accession to the throne of New York's ducal 
proprietor, under the title of James II. Dongan made 
journeys hither and thither through his province, paci- 



56 New York. 

lying the Indians, and seeing to the best interests of his 
own people. He was especially zealous in keeping 
guard over the northern frontier, already threatened by 
the French masters of Canada, so long the arch foes of 
the northeastern English colonies. Although Dongan 
was a Boman Catholic, he did not show any of that 
feeling which made some of his co-religionists sacrifice 
country to creed, nor did he ever become a tool of 
France, like so many of the Stuart courtiers of his day. 
On the contrary, he was active in thwarting French 
intrigues in the north, giving full warning concerning 
them to his royal master, to whom his active and loyal 
patriotism could hardly have been altogether pleasant. 
At any rate, no sooner had the duke become king 
than he dropped the mask of liberality, and took up his 
natural position as a political and religious tyrant. 
Under the influence of Dongan, he did indeed grant to 
the city itself a charter of special rights and privileges, 
which formed the basis of those subsequently granted 
in colonial times. The instrument not only confirmed 
the city in the possession of the privileges it already 
possessed, but allowed it a large quantity of real estate, 
from some of winch the municipality draws a revenue 
to the present day, while the rest has been given over 
for the common use of the people. But on the main 
point of self-government the king was resolved to re- 
trace his steps. He would not consummate his action 
Giving a liberal charter to the province, and though in 
1G84 Dongan summoned the Assembly to meet on his 
own responsibility, it was never thereafter called ; and 
New York's share in self government came to an end as 
far as the Stuarts were concerned. 



Under the Stuarts. 167^-igss. 57 

In 16S8 Dongan himself was deprived of the control 
of the province he had ruled so faithfully and wisely. 
The kiug was bent upon being absolute master of the 
colonies no less than of the home country ; and in the 
spring of that year he threw New England, New York, 
and New Jersey into one province, abolishing all the 
different charters, and putting the colonists under the 
direct control of the royal governor. Dongan was too 
liberal a man to be entrusted with the carrying out of 
such a policy. Sir Edmund Andros was sent over in 
his stead, to act as the instrument for depriving the 
people of such measure of freedom as they possessed. 
The bitterness of the religious feeling of the day may 
be gathered from the fact that many of the more bigoted 
Protestants of Manhattan actually welcomed the change 
of governors, being unable to pardon their friend be- 
cause he was not of their creed, and greeting their foe 
warmly because, forsooth, they did not quite so widely 
disagree with his theological tenets. 

However, the mass of the people in both New York 
and New England speedily became Melded into one in 
opposition to the absolutism of the Stuart king, as typi- 
fied by his lieutenant. Hollander and Puritan were 
knit together by the bond of a common hatred to the 
common oppressor; the Puritan as usual taking the 
lead. They were outraged because of the loss of their 
political rights ; and they feared greatly lest they should 
soon also lose their religious freedom. Moreover, the 
colonies were already jealous of one another, and deeply 
imbued with the Separatist feeling; and they counted 
the loss of their special charters, and the obliteration of 
their boundary lines that they might be put under one 



5S • New York. 

government, as grievances intolerable and not to be 
borne. Nor did they have to bear them long. That 
very year William of Orange landed in England and 
drove the last Stuart king from his throne. The news 
reached America early in 1689, when Andros was in 
Boston, and the New Englanders rose instantly and 
threw him into prison, while his governmental fabric 
throughout the provinces perished almost in a day. 

The accession of the Dutch prince to the throne of 
England added another to the forces that were tending 
to make the various ethnic elements of New York fuse 
together. All New Yorkers could be loyal to the Dutch 
prince who wore an English crown, and who was their 
special champion against a hostile creed and race. For 
the next eighty years Holland was England's ally, so 
that the Hollanders in America saw nothing at work in 
European politics which should make them unfriendly 
to their English fellow-citizens ; and the one great 
enemy of both races was France. Their interests and 
enmities were the same, and were also identical with 
those of the Huguenots, who formed the third great 
element in the population. It was this identity of 
interests and enmities, no less than the similarity in 
religious belief, which made it possible for the two races 
already in the laud to merge so easily into the third and 
later-coming race. The comparative rapidity of this 
fusion in New York is noteworthy. It stands in sharp 
contrast to the slowness of the intermingling where the 
English or their successors have conquered and moved 
into communities of Catholic French and Spaniards. 

From 1689 onward, the antagonisms of race were 
only secondary causes of party and factional hostility 



Under the Stuarts, mi-mss. 59 

in New York. The different nationalities remained far 
less stubbornly apart than was the case in the neigh- 
bouring colony of Pennsylvania for instance. Even 
when the bulk of one nationality was found to be op- 
posed to the bulk of another, the seeming race antago- 
nism was usually merely incidental, the real line of 
division being drawn with regard to other matters, such 
as divided the aristocratic and popular parties else- 
where. No element of the population kept obstinately 
aloof from the rest as did a large section of the Penn- 
sylvanian Germans, to their own lasting harm. The 
different races gradually grew to speak the same lan- 
guage, and then intermarried and merged together; for 
in America the intermarriage and fusion of races fol- 
lows, but does not precede, their adoption of a common 
tongue. The Revolution and the preliminary agitation 
greatly hastened this fusion; but it was already well 
under way before the first mutterings of the Revolution 
were heard. 



60 New York. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE USURPATION OF LEISLER. 1689-1691. 

The overthrow of the Stuart dynasty, and the conse- 
quent sudden fall of Andros, brought about the collapse 
of the existing government in v New York. There fol- 
lowed a period of turmoil and disorder, marked by a 
curious party fight and revolution, or rather attempted 
revolution, which in its various phases well illustrated 
the peculiar characteristics of New York life. 

The relaxing of the bonds of authority allowed the 
jealousies between the different classes of the popula- 
tion to come to a head. The mass of the citizens, — the 
men of small means, who in the best of times had en- 
joyed but little influence in the political life of the 
colony, — were sullenly hostile to the aristocratic and 
conservative class of Crown officials, patroons, rich mer- 
chants, and the like. The ferment in men's minds 
enormously increased the activity of the forces that were 
tending to collision. After Andros was imprisoned the 
conservative faction wished to continue in power the 
existing officers, appointed by King James, until they 
could be replaced by others bearing commissions from 
King William. The popular party, on the other hand, 
was for immediate action. Their leaders were inspired 
by the course of the New England colonies, which had 
promptly set up their former chartered governments. 



Usurpation of Leisler. igs9-i6dl 61 

Their proposal was to turn out all of the Stuart officials, 
and to put in their places men known to be faithful to 
the new order of things, who should govern until the 
will of the Prince of Orange was known. Of course 
all of the official class and the English Episcopalians, 
as well as the Hollanders and Huguenots of property, 
generally took the conservative view ; the other was 
adopted by the poor people and radical liberals and 
Protestants, very many of the Puritans uniting with the 
Dutch and French Calvinist working-men, small traders, 
sailors, and farm labourers. The popular party was at 
first joined by a very large number of respectable men, 
well-to-do or of small means, who afterward became 
alienated by the sweeping measures of the extremists 
and by the fickleness and violence of the mob. The 
greater number of the citizens whose tongue was French 
or Dutch were in its ranks, while the aristocratic faction 
contained a large share of the English element ; but 
the difference was one of caste and instinct, not of 
speech or race. Indeed, the leaders of the aristocratic 
wing, after the lieutenant-governor (Nicholson), were 
the three members of the deposed governor's council, 
Bayard, Van Cortlandt and Phillipse, all of Dutch birth 
or ancestry. On the other hand their opponents were 
led by a German named Jacob Leisler, who was 
strongly seconded by his son-in-law, one Jacob Mil- 
borne. New York City, then as now, contained within 
its population many different races only beginning to 
fuse together ; and then as now, the lines of party were 
only subordinately affected by the lines of race, — each 
faction possessing representatives of all the different 
elements, while the leaders were found, as is still the 



62 New York. 

case, among men of diverse origin and nationality. 
Religious animosities, as ever since, had much effect in 
sharpening party differences. 

Leisler was a merchant of property, a deacon in the 
Dutch Reformed Church, and a captain of one of the 
six militia trainbands over which Bayard was colonel. 
He was a zealous Protestant and Republican, a fanatical 
hater of the Roman Catholic Church, and only less op- 
posed to the Episcopacy of the English. He seems to 
have been an earnest man, of much power and energy, 
honest in his purpose to help the poorer people and to 
put down civil and religious tyranny. It is easy to 
imagine circumstances in which he would have done 
much good to the community wherein he lived. But 
he was of coarse, passionate nature, and too self-willed 
and vain not to have his head turned by sudden success 
and the possession of power. Moreover, like most pop- 
ular leaders of his stamp, the very sincerity of his con- 
victions made him feel that the cause of the people was 
indeed his own, and therefore that the converse of the 
proposition was also true. Such a man when he him- 
self becomes a ruler is of course likely to continue to 
exercise against the people the very qualities which in 
the beginning he has exercised on their behalf ; and 
this without any, or at most with but little, conscious 
change of intent. Yet with all Leisler's faults it must 
be remembered that fundamentally he was right, for he 
struggled to procure enlarged liberties for the people. 

The tyranny of King James had been two sided, — he 
had striven to make the power of the sovereign abso- 
lute, and less directly, to make the Romish Church 
arbiter of men's consciences. The New York com- 



Usurpation of Leisler. iosu-ighi. 63 

monalty detested his officers, both as representing the 
civil power that actually had oppressed them and as 
standing for the religious power that possibly would 
oppress them. They naturally bore especial hatred to 
such of the officials as were Catholics ; and it was this 
feeling that brought about the first break between the 
popular party and the upholders of the existing order of 
things. 

Leisler imported a cargo of wine from Europe, but 
refused to pay the duties on the ground that the col- 
lector of the port was a Catholic. The council sided 
witli the collector, and high words passed between them 
and Leisler, endiug with a furious quarrel and the in- 
terchange of threats. The common folk at once made 
the cause of the recalcitrant wine merchant their own, and 
adopted him as their champion, — a position for which 
he was well fitted by his truculent daring aud energy. 
Many wild stories were afloat as to the plots which were 
being concocted by the governmental officers, whom 
most of the citizens firmly believed to be under the 
influence of the Catholics, and in secret league with the 
fallen monarch. It was rumoured, now that they were 
about to surrender the city to the French, now that they 
were plotting to procure an uprising of the Catholics 
and massacre of the Protestants. As the latter out-num- 
bered the former twenty to one, this fear shows the state 
of foolish panic to which the people had been wrought ; 
but foolish or not, their excitement kept rising, and they 
became more and more angry aud uneasy. 

The outbreak was finally precipitated by a misunder- 
standing between the governing authorities and some of 
the trainbands; for the latter had been called in to 



64 New York. 

assist the handful of regular troops who were on guard 
in the fort. The quarrel arose over a question of 
discipline between the lieutenant-governor and the 
militia officers. The former chafed under the sus- 
picions of the citizens, — which he was perhaps con- 
scious that he merited, at least to the extent of being 
but a lukewarm supporter of the new order of things, — 
and lacked the tact to handle himself properly in such 
an emergency. He ended by bursting into a passion, 
and dismissing the militia officers from his presence 
with the remark that he would rather see the town 
on fire than be commanded by them. 

This was the spark to the train. The indignant 
militiamen were soon spreading the report that the 
governor had threatened in their presence to burn the 
town. The burghers readily' believed the truth of the 
statement, and under Leisler's lead determined to take 
the reins of the government into their own hands. At 
noon of May 31, 1G89, Leisler summoned the citizens to 
arms by beat of drum, mustering his own trainband 
before his house. The suddenness of the movement, 
and Leisler's energy, paralyzed opposition. The lieu- 
tenant-governor yielded up the fort, no time being 
given him to prepare for resistance ; and the city coun- 
cil were speedily overawed by the militia, who marched 
into their presence as they sat in the City Hall. The 
popular party for the first time was in complete control 
of the city. 

There was much justification for this act of the 
common people and their leaders. Doubtless their 
fears for their own lives and property were exaggerated ; 
but there was good ground for uneasiness so long as the 



Usurpation of Leisler. i689-i69i. 65 

city was under the control of the Stuart adherents. 
The exiled House of Stuart became at once the active 
ally of the most bitter enemies of Eugland, Holland, and 
their colonies. King James identified his cause with 
that of the Church and the nation from whose triumph 
the New Yorkers had most to fear. Many of the 
officers whom he had left in high places proved willing 
to betray their countrymen for the sake of their king; 
and even attempted treachery might bring manifold 
and serious evils upon a small colouial city like New 
York. If there was really but little danger from the 
Catholics, there was beyond question a great deal to be 
feared from the French ; and all those who held commis- 
sions from the House of Stuart, if they were loyal to the 
king who had appointed them, were bound to render 
assistance to the common public enemy, France. Leis- 
ler and the burghers were on the whole right in feeling 
that they were warranted in overthrowing the old gov- 
ernment. In this they were supported, at least pas- 
sively, by the bulk even of the conservative citizens ; 
they were opposed chiefly by the rich and aristocratic 
families, who were hostile to all popular movements, 
and perhaps leaned secretly to the side of the Stuarts 
and absolute government. Of course the timid and 
wealthy persons of no convictions objected to change of 
any sort. Had Leisler contented himself with merely 
establishing a temporary government to preserve order 
and ward off outside aggression until the new officials 
should arrive from England, he would have deserved the 
good-will of all the citizens. 

Unfortunately, he lacked the self-restraint and clear- 
sightedness necessary to the pursuit of such a course ; 

5 



66 New York. 

and he speedily established as arbitrary and unjust a 
government as that he overthrew. For a short time he 
ruled wisely and with moderation, oppressing no one. 
Then his head became turned by his position. He was 
always boasting of his feat in, as he asserted, saving 
the city from destruction ; and he kept comparing him- 
self to Cromwell, announcing that to rescue the people 
from their oppressors, there was need of sword-rule in 
New York. The English Episcopalians naturally de- 
tested his sway from the beginning, as did those wealthy 
French and Dutch families that had previously pos- 
sessed a share of the governing power. All of these 
people were closely watched , and though at first not 
actually molested, they soon began to suffer petty 
oppression and injustice at the hands of the rougher of 
Leisler's lieutenants. As they grew more set against 
Leisler their hatred was repaid in kind. From time to 
time both their persons and their property were put in 
actual jeopardy by some freak of jealous suspicion or 
wounded vanity on the part of the popular dictator. 
The mass of the people did not care much for the ills 
that befell these first sufferers ; but before many months 
were over, they themselves were forced to bear their 
share of unjust treatment, and then of course they 
became very loud in their indignation. Leisler was 
doubtless in part actuated by honest distrust of his 
opponents, and belief that he himself could do most 
good to the city and especially to the common folk, 
and in part by the ambitions to which his success had 
given birth. He found it difficult to know where to 
stop in pursuing his dictatorial policy. His suspicion 
of the Episcopalians grew to include the Puritans. 



Usurpation of Leisler. mso-moi. 67 

His animosity toward the aristocratic families was far 
from being altogether causeless ; for they were un- 
doubtedly bitterly hostile not only to him but to the pop- 
ular cause he represented. But he soon began to con- 
found his aristocratic enemies with the people of means 
generally; and his baser supporters, under plea of 
enthusiasm for Protestantism and liberty, meuaced 
indiscriminately every man of property, so that all the 
most thrifty and successful people of the community, 
including the Dutch and Huguenot clergy, became 
banded together against him. The decent working- 
men also grew alarmed at his excesses and irritated at 
the pride he displayed and at the insolence of some of 
his subordinates, their own former equals. 

Soon after Leisler had overthrown the lieutenant-gov- 
ernor and taken the reins of power, a royal proclamation 
was brought over which continued in office all Protes- 
tant officials. The old council greeted this proclamation 
with exultation, for if obeyed it restored them to office ; 
but Leisler, fearing for his life if his foes returned to 
power, and furious at seeing his work thus undone, 
determined to disobey the command of the sovereigns, 
treasonable though such conduct was. At the head of 
his troops he dispersed the council, and continued his 
own appointees in place. The mob was at this time 
heartily in his favour, and cheered on the trainbands ; 
and finally Bayard and Van Cortlandt were chased 
from the city. 

Leisler had summoned a convention which, when it 
met, contained of course only the extreme men ; not a 
few of its members were Republicans, or avowed adher- 
ents of the policy of Oliver Cromwell. They chose a 



68 New York. 

committee of safety, ten in number, consisting of Hol- 
landers, Huguenots, and English Puritans. They were 
all furious Protestants and ultra liberals ; and they 
speedily nominated Leisler as commander-in-chief, with 
extensive and indeed arbitrary powers. Soon afterward 
a letter was received from the sovereigns which was 
directed to the "commander-in-chief" of the province 
of New York. It was meant for Nicholson whom the 
home government supposed to be still in power, but 
by an oversight his name was not put in the document ; 
and the delighted Leisler insisted that he himself was the 
man for whom it w T as intended. He promptly assumed 
the title of lieutenant-governor, chose his own council, 
and formally entered on his duties as the royal repre- 
sentative and ruler of the colony. He treated the city 
as under martial law, yet in certain matters he showed 
his leaning toward democracy. Thus instead of ap- 
pointing a mayor he allowed the freeholders to elect 
one, — the first, and until 1834, the last elective mayor 
of New York. The opposition to his rule outside of 
Manhattan Island was very strong from the outset ; 
and Albany, under the lead of Schuyler, refused to 
recognize his authority until forced to do so by the 
pressing danger from the Canadian French and their 
savage allies. 

In outside matters the usurping governor showed 
breadth of mind, — notably in calling a congress of the 
colonies, the first of its kind, which met in New York in 
the spring of 1690. The purpose of the meeting was to 
plan a joint attack on Canada ; for Count Frontenac's war- 
parties were cruelly harassing the outlying settlements 
of both New York and New England. A small army 



Usurpation of Leisler. i6S9-ig>i. 69 

of Connecticut men and New Yorkers was assembled, 
and marched to the head of Lake Champlain, but owing 
to mismanagement accomplished nothing ; and the ex- 
pedition was finally abandoned after a bitter quarrel 
between Leisler and his New England allies. Nothing 
against France was accomplished beyond a couple of 
brilliant raids made by Schuyler up to the walls of 
Montreal, and the capture of a number of French ships 
by Leisler's New York privateers. Yet, though this 
intercolonial congress produced such small results, it 
marks an era in the growth of the provinces which 
afterward became the United States. It was the first 
occasion on which the colonies ever showed the least 
tendency to act together, or on which they appeared as 
aught but a jumble of mutually hostile communities. 
Up to this time their several paths of development had 
been entirely separate, and their interests independent 
and usually conflicting; but after this date they had a 
certain loose connection with one another, and it be- 
comes possible to treat their history in some degree 
as a whole. 

In domestic affairs, Leisler sometimes did well and 
sometimes ill. He summoned two popular assemblies. 
They were filled with his supporters, ratified all his 
acts, and gave him power to go to any lengths he chose. 
He allowed his subordinates to maltreat the Long- 
Islanders, Dutchmen and Puritans alike, who accord- 
ingly sent long petitions for redress to England. He 
opened letters, plundered houses, confiscated estates to 
satisfy taxes, and imprisoned numbers of the leading- 
citizens whom he believed to be his enemies. He 
treated the Calvinist dominies as roughly as their flocks, 



70 New York. 

and all the men of property became greatly alarmed. 
The leading Dutch and French citizens made common 
cause with the English, and sent a vigorous remon- 
strance to the home government praying for relief, and 
denouncing Leisler as an "insolent alien" who had 
tyrannized over the city, holding the lives and property 
of all citizens at his mercy, and setting up as rulers 
men of the meanest station and capacity, and often of 
criminal antecedents. Doubtless much of this opposi- 
tion was due. merely to an aristocratic dislike of anything 
like democracy; but Leisler's "government of the people" 
had beyond question begun to degenerate into govern- 
ment by the mob and by a tyrant. His overbearing 
conduct alienated the mass of the mechanics, craftsmen, 
and labourers ; and he was soon left unsupported save by 
the men he had put in office, and by the militia, in 
whose ranks he had left only his own adherents. 

The repeated petitions of the citizens attracted the 
attention of King William ; and to stop the disorders a 
governor (Sloughter) and a lieutenant-governor (In- 
goldsby) were duly commissioned, and sent out to the 
colony with an adequate force of regular troops. The 
ship carrying the governor was blown out of its course ; 
and when Ingoldsby, early in February, 1691, landed 
on Manhattan Island, Leisler refused to recognize his 
authority. The mass of the citizens supported Ingoldsby, 
while the militia stood by Leisler. For six weeks the 
two parties remained under arms, threatening eacli 
other, Ingoldsby's headquarters being in the City Hall 
and Leisler's in the fort. Then a skirmish took place 
in which several of Ingoldsby's regulars were killed or 
wounded, while Leisler's militia, shielded by the fort, 



Usurpation of Leisler. igso-igoi. yi 

escaped unharmed. The very day after this, Governor 
Sloughter's ship appeared in the harbour, and he imme- 
diately landed and took command. The following morn- 
ing Leisler's militia deserted him, and he and his chief 
officers were promptly seized and imprisoned. They 
were tried for high treason, and Leisler and Milborne, 
the two ringleaders, were adjudged guilty and hanged; 
most of the respectable citizens, including the clergymen 
of every denomination, demanding their death as afford- 
ing the only warrant for the future safety of the colony. 
The Leislerian or democratic party was cowed, and for 
the moment did nothing save feebly and ineffectually 
to protest against the execution of the sentence. 

The popular party of New York had certainly failed 
to show governmental capacity, moderation toward op- 
ponents, or power to curb the oppressive tyranny of 
its own leaders. Its downfall was as complete as the 
triumph of the aristocratic element. The government 
of the colony was at once put on the basis on which it 
stood until the outbreak of the Revolution. There was a 
governor appointed by the king, and a council likewise 
appointed ; while the Assembly was elected by the free- 
holders. The suffrage was thus limited by a strict prop- 
erty qualification. Liberty of conscience was granted 
to all Protestant sects, but not to the Catholics ; and 
the Church of England was practically made the State 
Church, though the Dutch and French congregations 
were secured in the rights guaranteed them by treaty. 
It was thus essentially a class or aristocratic govern- 
ment, — none the less so because to European eyes the 
little American aristocracy seemed both poor and rude. 
In a frontier community such as New York then was, 



72 New York. 

it was comparatively easy for any man to acquire prop- 
erty and position, and thus step into the ranks of the 
relatively large ruling class. 1 Nevertheless, democracy, 
as such, had small share in the government. 

However, the Leislerians soon plucked up heart, and 
appeared once more in public, claiming their fallen 
chief as a martyr, and troubling their foes for a genera- 
tion ere they gradually lost their identity and became 
merged in the general mass of the popular party. 
Though this element of the population, owing to the 
restricted suffrage, possessed less than its due weight in 
the government, yet it always had allies and mouth- 
pieces in the Assembly. These advocates of popular 
rights rarely made a fight for the granting of political 
power to the masses, but they were kept busy in battling 
against the prerogatives of the crown and the power of 
the great patroons and rich merchants. For the next 
three quarters of a century the struggle for popular 
rights in New York took the form, not of a demand for 
democratic government and manhood suffrage, but of a 
contest waged on behalf of the men of small property 
against the authority of a foreign monarchy and the rule 
of a native oligarchy. 

1 Many of the loading families in colonial times were descended 
from tlie Old Woild gentry. Many others sprang from successful 
adventurers of almost unknown ancestry. The Livingstons, for in- 
stance, one of the really noted New York families, were descended 
from a young Scotch factor, just like hundreds of penniless, pushing 
3 - oung Scotchmen who have come to this country in the steerage of 
sailing-ship or steamer during the present century. Of the men of 
high social standing in the Old World who came over to make their 
fortunes in the New, prohahly the majority failed, and their descend- 
ants slipped down into the lower ranks of the population. 



Growth of the Seaport, igoi-itm. 73 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE GROWTH OF THE COLONIAL SEAPORT. 1691-1720. 

For three quarters of a century after the collapse of 
Leisler's rebellion the internal and external politics of 
New York City ran in monotonous grooves, and were 
largely merged in those of the province, the interests 
of the town and country being as a rule identical. 
There was a succession of long wars with France, the 
New Yorkers, like the other English colonists, and like 
England herself, soon coming to look upon the French 
as their hereditary and natural foes. This continuous 
struggle with a powerful common enemy was a potent 
cause in keeping the colonists of Manhattan, like those 
of the rest of America, loyal to the mother country ; 
and the growth of sentiments and interests hostile to 
the latter, though steady, was unappreciated even by 
the colonists themselves. Their internal politics were 
marked by unceasing struggles in the Assembly, — strug- 
gles, sometimes between the aristocratic and popular 
factions, sometimes between one or the other or bntli 
of these factions and whoever happened for the time 
to represent the Crown. The overthrow of the Stuart 
dynasty had resulted in an immense gain for liberty, 
and for free and orderly government in New York. 
The last Stuart king had never granted the liberties he 
had promised to the colonists ; but by his successor 



74 New York. 

they were immediately given in full. Hitherto New 
York's share in self-government had depended purely on 
the pleasure of her successive rulers. Under and ow- 
ing to William of Orange, she made the first noteworthy 
advance in the direction of self-government by right, 
irrespective of the views of the royal governor who 
might be over her. 

Throughout all this period New York was a little 
seaport town, without manufactures, and dependent 
upon ocean industries for her well-being. There was 
little inland commerce ; everything was done by ship- 
ping. The merchants were engaged in the river trade 
with Albany and the interior, in the coast trade with 
the neighbouring colonies, in the fisheries, and in the 
sea trade with England, Africa, and the East and West 
Indies. Every few years there occurred a prolonged 
maritime war with either France or Spain, and some- 
times with both. Then the seas were scourged and the 
coasts vexed by the war-ships and privateers of the hos- 
tile powers ; and the intervals of peace were troubled 
by the ravages of pirate and picaroon. Commerce 
was not a merely peaceful calling ; and those who went 
down to the sea in ships led troublous lives. 

The seafaring folk, or those whose business was con- 
nected with theirs, formed the bulk of New York's 
white population. The poor man went to sea in the 
vessel the richer man built or owned or commanded ; 
and where the one risked life and limb, the other at 
least risked his fortune and future. Many of the ven- 
tures were attended with great danger even iu times of 
peace. Besides the common risks of storm and wreck, 
other and peculiar perils were braved by the ships that 



Growth of the Seaport. i69i-mo. 75 

sailed for the Guinea Coast, to take part in the profit- 
able but hideously brutal and revolting trade for slaves. 
The traffic with the strange coast cities of the Red Sea 
and the Indian Ocean likewise had dangers all its own. 
Pirate and sultan and savage chief had all to be 
guarded against, and sometimes outwitted, and some- 
times outfought. 

Moreover, the New York merchants and seamen were 
themselves ready enough to risk their lives and money 
in enterprises where the profits to be gained by peaceful 
trade came second, and those by legal warfare or illegal 
plundering first. In every war the people plunged into 
the business of privateering with immense zest and 
eagerness. New York Province dreaded the Canadians 
and Indians, but New York City feared only the fleets 
of France ; her burghers warred, as well as traded, 
chiefly on the ocean. Privateering was a species of 
gambling which combined the certainty of exciting ad- 
venture with the chance of enormous profit, and it 
naturally possessed special attractions for the bolder 
and more reckless spirits. Many of the merchants who 
fitted out privateers lost heavily, but many others made 
prizes so rich that the profits of ordinary voyages sank 
into insignificance by comparison. Spanish treasure- 
ships, and French vessels laden with costly stuffs from 
the West Indies or the Orient, were brought into New 
York harbour again and again, — often after fights to the 
severity of which the battered hulls of both the captor 
and the vanquished vessel bore unequivocal testimony. 
When the prize was very rich and the crew of the 
privateer large, the home-coming of the latter meant a 
riot; for in such a case the flushed privateeismen cele- 



?6 New York. 

brated their victory with wild orgies and outrages, 
and finally had to be put down by actual battle in the 
streets. The land owners were often merchants as 
well ; and more than one of them was able to flank the 
gateway of his manor-house with the carved prows and 
figure-heads of the vessels his own privateers had 
captured. 

In time of war both risk and profit were great, yet 
they were but little less in the short periods of peace, 
or rather of truce. Under the system of jealous trade- 
exclusion which then obtained, each trader was a pos- 
sible smuggler, and the cruisers of every naval power 
were always harassing the merchantmen sailing under 
rival flags. Even if a vessel did not smuggle, she was 
liable at any moment to be seized on the pretext that 
she was trying to ; and so, as she had to undergo the 
dangers in any event, she felt no reluctance in attempt- 
ing to gather the profits when occasion offered. Again, 
the line dividing the work of the privateer from the 
work of the pirate was easy to overstep, and those who 
employed the one were not reluctant at times to profit 
by the deeds of the other. The pirate merely con- 
tinued in somewhat exaggerated form against all nations, 
at all times, the practices which the privateer employed 
against certain nations at certain times. There were 
plenty of both merchants and seamen in New York 
who failed to draw any nice distinction between the 
two classes of vessels ; and the full-armed, strongly 
manned trading-ship, which alone was employed in the 
more perilous water-paths of commerce, and which was 
always ready to do privateering work in time of actual 
war, in time of peace was not unapt to hoist the black 



Growth of the Seaport. i69i-mo. jj 

flag for the nouce in distant seas, or at least to barter 
freely with the acknowledged pirates. The slavers in 
particular, whose crews and captains were sure to be 
rough, hardened, greedy men, wonted to bloodshed and 
violence, were very likely to turn pirate as occasion of- 
fered ; while the pirates were equally willing to engage 
in the slave-trade, and to sell their living cargoes to the 
regular slavers, or to attack the latter, as circumstances 
dictated. The lawlessness was greatest in the oriental 
seas. The huge Arab and Indian coasters, freighted 
with rare and precious stuff's, were sought after with 
furious eagerness by both pirate and privateer ; while 
the former also swooped down on the Dutch and Eng- 
lish East Indiamen. At Madagascar there was a reim- 
lar fort and station to which some of the New York 
merchants sent ships for the sole purpose of trading 
with the pirate vessels who carried their ill-gotten 
goods thither. Many a daring skipper who obeyed the 
law fairly well in Atlantic waters, felt free to do as he 
wished when he neared Madagascar, or cruised through 
the Eed Sea and the Indian Ocean. The rich cargoes 
of oriental goods, the spices, perfumes, silks, shawls, 
rugs, pearls, and golden coin and jewels, were of such 
value that men did not care to ask too closely how 
they were acquired. There were plenty of adventur- 
ous young New Yorkers, of good blood, who were them- 
selves privateersmen, Red-Sea men, or slavers ; and in 
the throng of seafaring men of this type, the crews and 
captains of the pirate ships passed unchallenged. The 
taverns and low houses along the water-front of the 
little seaport were filled with, wind-roughened sailor- 
folk, outlandish in speech and dress, wild of look, black 



yS New York. 

of heart, and ripe for any desperate venture. Their 
dare-devil commanders were not only tolerated but 
welcomed as guests at the houses of many among the 
gentry and merchants, who had themselves in one way 
or another gained great profit from lawless ocean war- 
fare. Their mad freaks and furious orgies and ca- 
rouses made them the terror of quiet people; but their 
lavish extravagance with their stores of strange Span- 
ish, Indian, and Arabiau coin gave them also a certain 
popularity. 

The goods brought from the far eastern lands by 
these men, and by their fellow sea-rovers of slightly 
stricter morality, gave a touch of quaint luxury, and 
their own presence added an air of dash and adventure, 
to the life of the growing town on Manhattan Island. 
There was a suggestion of the Orient and of hazardous 
fortunes, ill made and lightly lost, in the costly goods 
with which the rich burghers and manorial lords decked 
their roomy houses, and clothed themselves and their 
wives. The dress of the time was picturesque ; and the 
small social world of New York, as haughty and ex- 
clusive after its own fashion as any, looked leniently on 
the men whose deeds made it possible for the titled 
Crown officials, and the untitled leaders of the local 
oligarchy, alike, to go clad in rich raiment. More than 
one sea-chief of doubtful antecedents held his head high 
among the New York people of position, on the infre- 
quent occasions when he landed to revel and live at 
ease, while his block-hulled, rakish craft was discharg- 
ing her cargo at the wharves, or refitting for another 
mysterious voyage. The grim-visaged pirate captain, 
in his laced cap, rich jacket, and short white knee- 



Growth of the Seaport, moi-1120. 79 

trunks, with heavy gold chains round his neck, and 
jewel-hilted dagger in belt, was a striking and charac- 
teristic feature of New York life at the close of the 
seventeenth century. Soon afterward the boldness and 
the serious nature of the piratical ravages thoroughly 
roused the home government, which made resolute 
efforts to stop them. The colonial authorities joined to 
hunt the rovers from their coasts ; and though the men 
of the black flag continued to ply their trade in trop- 
ical seas, they never after that time appeared in the 
colonial seaports save by stealth. 

The favour shown to the pirates brought scandal on 
the name of more than one royal governor of New 
York. This was especially the case with Gov. Benjamin 
Fletcher, a stout, florid soldier of fortune, who came 
over to take control in 1692, the year after the tragic 
end of Leisler's rebellion. He possessed both energy 
and courage, but was utterly unfitted for a civil post of 
such difficulty as that to which he was now appointed. 
Being a fawning courtier to the king, he naturally took 
a tone of insolent command in dealing with the colony. 
Though very strict in religious observances he was a 
loose liver, fond of luxury, and of extravagant habits ; 
lie was therefore continually in want of money, and 
both he and some of his council were in the habit of 
receiving valuable gifts — amounting to blackmail — 
from the different pirate ships. Finally, the scandal 
grew so great that he was recalled. 

Other causes, however, contributed to bring about the 
recall. Fletcher was a stanch supporter of the col- 
onial aristocracy, and bitterly opposed to the popular 
party. He interfered actively against the latter in the 



8o New York. . 

elections for the General Assembly, and helped to achieve 
a triumph which was largely due to wholesale intimida- 
tions, — for the partisans of the governor and the richer 
classes mobbed their opponents, and in many places 
drove them by force from the polling-booths. He 
granted the public lands right and left, doing his best 
to divide the soil of the province among a few rich 
families. He thus sought to build up a system of gi- 
gantic tenant-farmed estates, instead of allowing the 
country to become filled with small freehold farmers. 
He also connived at the acquisition by private individ- 
uals of great tracts of laud from the Indians ; and his 
grants were made to ministers and churches as well as 
to laymen. In short, his whole theory was to depress 
the freemen of small means, and to concentrate power 
and wealth in the hands of the Church and the aris- 
tocracy ; and according to his capacities he was an 
unwholesome and vicious force in the body politic. 

For some of Fletcher's acts, however, there was at least 
much excuse ; and in certain of the wrangles in which he 
became engaged, his opponents behaved no better than 
he did. Thus, he allowed the merchants to evade the 
iron laws of trade. He probably winked at these eva- 
sions, partly from dislike of trouble, partly, perhaps, 
from worse motives ; but it may be that he felt some 
genuine impatience with the restrictions by which the 
merchants of England sought to hem in the growth of 
the colonies and to keep their trade solely for the benefit 
of the ruling country. As regards most articles, the 
colonists could only trade outright with England, and 
the consequent loss to the merchants was immense. Of 
course, such a system put a premium on smuggling, 



Growth of the Seaport. ieoi-mo. 81 

and, fur the matter of that, on trading with pirates, too, 
and on every other method by which the laws could be 
evaded. Yet these same laws were so in accord with 
the spirit of the time that there was little open protest 
against them, though they doubtless contributed to the 
growth of the vague feeling of discontent with the home 
government which gradually crept into colonial hearts. 
On the other hand the Assembly, or popular branch of 
the colonial legislature, was always striving to throw, as 
nearly as might be, the whole burden of colonial defence 
on the British Crown and Parliament; and its selfish- 
ness, short-sightedness, and very moderate ability, to- 
gether with its unlimited capacity for ignoble squab- 
bling, spake but ill for the body of electors to whose 
suffrages it owed its being. The different colonies, 
moreover, cared not a jot for one another's misfortunes. 
Well-settled, thriving New England was quite content 
to let thinly-settled, struggling New York get on as best 
she might when almost overwhelmed by the Canadians 
and Indians. The Puritan commonwealths were well 
pleased to have such a buffer between them and French 
aggression. They looked on with cold and selfish in- 
difference until the danger was brought home directly 
to their own thresholds ; the money-making spirit was 
as yet too strong in their breasts to leave room for more 
generous and disinterested emotions. Fletcher spent 
much of his time in a wordy warfare with the New 
Englanders, because of their desertion of New York, and 
in quarrelling with the Assembly of the latter province 
for its multifarious misdeeds, and especially for the 
heinous sin of endeavouring to whittle down his own 
salary. He was recalled to England early in 1698. 

6 



82 New York. 

Fletcher's successor was a nobleman of strong and high 
character, the Earl of Bellomont, — a man of pure life and 
strict honour, and altogether of far nobler type than the 
average colonial governor. He belonged to that limited 
class in the English aristocracy which combined intense 
pride and exclusiveness in social matters with a genuine 
belief in popular liberty and political equality, and a 
dislike of privilege and privileged castes. He seems to 
have clearly seen that the establishment in New York 
of an oligarchy such as Fletcher and the wealthy citi- 
zens in general dreamed of, meant injustice to the mass 
of the people for the time being, and therefore in the 
end an uprising, and the destruction of the iniquitous 
system by violence. His duty appeared to him plain ; 
and he attacked the intrenched evils with the utmost 
resolution. It was an uphill struggle, for the most 
powerful interests of the colony were banded against 
him ; and, moreover, in dealing with men his tact was 
not equal to his courage and probity. 

Bellomont at once espoused the cause of the Leislev- 
ians, the champions of the common people ; and during 
his three years' rule in "New York the popular party was 
uppermost. He even had the bodies of Leisler and 
Milborne disinterred and buried again with all honour. 
From the outset he was forced into an unrelenting war 
on many of the public officials, who were given over to 
financial dishonesty and bribe-taking, being in corrupt 
collusion with the merchants, pirates, and smugglers ; 
for the whole governmental service had become thor- 
oughly debauched. He enforced the laws of trade with 
rigid severity, put down smuggling, and checked in 
every way the unscrupulous greed of the great mer- 



Growth of the Seaport. 1001-172 j. 83 

chants. He also hunted away the pirates, and hung 
those whom he caught in chains on the different head- 
lands of the coast ; and it was while engaged in this 
pursuit that there occurred the curious incident of his 
connection with the famous Captain Kidd. The latter 
was a daring seaman who, when the earl first knew him, 
bore a good character, as seafaring characters went, and 
readily fell in with the earl's plans for pirate-hunting. 
Finally the earl, in company with several other English 
noblemen, and with one New Yorker, Livingston, the 
founder of a line of manorial lords, agreed to fit out 
Kidd for a cruise against the pirates, whose haunts he 
well knew. All were to go shares in whatever plunder 
might be obtained from the ships of the captured free- 
booters. Kidd's proposed enterprise attracted much 
attention, and as he was given a fine bark he found no 
difficulty in manning her with a crew better fitted for 
warlike than peaceful pursuits. He cruised after pirates 
for some time, but with indifferent success ; whereupon 
he philosophically turned pirate himself, and became 
one of the scourges of the ocean. He still haunted the 
New York and New England coast at times, landing in 
out-of-the-way havens, and burying his blood-stained 
treasure on lonely beaches and islands ; and finally the 
earl caught his backsliding friend, who was shortly 
afterward hung in chains at Execution Dock. The 
peculiar circumstances attendant upon Kidd's turning 
pirate attracted widespread attention, though his ex- 
ploits were, in reality, less remarkable than those of 
scores of other freebooters. He became a favourite sub- 
ject for ballads, and gradually grew to be accepted in 
the popular mind as the archetype of his kind ; while 



84 New York. 

the search for his buried treasure, having been successful 
in one or two instances, became almost a recognized 
industry among the more imaginative of the dwellers 
by the sea. 

Bellomont distinctly perceived the vast evils pro- 
duced by the system of huge landed estates; and on 
behalf of the small freeholders he fearlessly attacked the 
manorial lords. He forfeited such of their grants as he 
considered to have been illegally secured; no incon- 
siderable number when the estates fraudulently pur- 
chased from the Indians were added to those acquired 
by judicious presents to the Crown officials. His aim 
was ultimately to establish the rule that no one estate 
larger than a thousand acres should be permitted. In 
attacking laymen he did not spare the Church ; and 
assailed alike the excessive land-grants of the Dutch 
Reformed clergy and the Anglican bodies. His term of 
office was too short to permit him to put his far-reach- 
ing plans into execution ; nevertheless, he did accom- 
plish something of what he was aiming at. 

Naturally Bellomont aroused the intense hostility of 
all the powerful, favoured classes he had attacked. Al- 
most every great land-owner and rich merchant, every 
corrupt Crown official, every man who had thriven by 
smuggling and by winking at piracy, assailed him with 
venomous anger. His character stood so high, however, 
that these attacks could not shake him in the esteem of 
the home powers; while the common people loved and 
reverenced him exceedingly, and mourned him with 
bitter regret when in 1701 he died, after a short rule of 
three years. 

There followed a period of the utmost confusion, the 



Growth of the Seaport leoi-mo. 85 

Leislerian and aristocratic factions coming almost to 
civil war ; for the former had been raised to power by 
Bellomont, but now lacked his restraining hand, and 
feared the speedy triumph of the oligarchy under some 
new governor. The culminating points were reached 
in the trial of two of the aristocratic leaders for alleged 
treason, and in a disorderly election for aldermen in 
New York. Both parties claimed the victory in this 
election, the voting in many of the precincts being dis- 
tinguished by the most flagrant fraud ; and all the con- 
tending aldermen proceeded to try to take their seats 
at the same time, the resulting riot being ended by a 
compromise. 

In 1702, when Queen Anne had just ascended the 
throne, her nephew, Lord Cornbury, came out as gov- 
ernor. He promptly restored order by putting down 
the Leislerians ; and by his influence the aristocracy 
were once more placed in power. To say truth, the 
popular party, by its violence, and the corruption of 
some of its chiefs, had done much to forfeit the good- 
will of the respectable middle classes. 

Cornbury, however, did the democracy a good turn 
by forthwith drowning the memory of its shortcomings 
in the torrent of his own follies and misdeeds. He was 
very nearly an ideal example of what a royal governor 
should not be. He was both silly and wicked. He 
hated the popular party, and in all ways that he could 
he curtailed the political rights of the people. He 
favoured the manorial lords and rich merchants as against 
the commonalty : but he did all he could to wrong even 
these favourites when it was for his own interest to do 
so. He took bribes, very thinly disguised as gifts. He 



86 New York. 

was always in debt, and was given to debauchery of 
various kinds. One of his amusements was to mas- 
querade in woman's garments, being, of all things, 
inordinately proud that when thus dressed he looked 
like Queen Anne. He added bigotry to his other fail- 
ings, and persecuted the Presbyterians, who were en- 
deavouring to get a foothold in the colony ; he imprisoned 
their ministers and confiscated their little meeting- 
houses. In this respect, however, he was but a shade 
worse than the men he ruled over; for the Assembly 
had passed a law condemning to death all Catholic 
priests found in the colony, — a law of which the wicked- 
ness was neither atoned for nor justified by the fact 
that the same measure of iniquity was meted out to the 
Protestants in the countries where the Catholics had 
control. He appropriated to other uses the moneys 
furnished by the Assembly to put New York harbour 
into a state of defence ; the result being that a French 
war-ship once entered the lower bay and threw the 
whole city into terror. Finally, the citizens of all 
parties became so exasperated against him as to clamor- 
ously demand his removal, which was granted in 1708 ; 
but before he left the colony he had been thrown into 
prison for debt. In dealing with him the Assembly 
took very high ground in regard to the right of the 
colony to regulate its own affairs, insisting on the right 
of the popular branch of the government to fix the 
taxes, and to appoint most of the public officers and 
regulate their fees. Eesolutions of this character show- 
that during the score of years which had elapsed since 
the downfall of the Stuarts, the colony had made giant 
strides toward realizing its own rights and powers. 



Growth of the Seaport. 1691 it jo. 87 

With all their faults, the Leislerians had done good 
service in arousing the desire for freedom, and in teach- 
ing men — if often only by painful example and expe- 
rience — to practise the self-restraint which is as neces- 
sary as self-confidence to any community desirous of 
doing its own governmental work. 

After a couple of years of practical interregnum, New 
York received another governor, one Eobert Hunter, 
whose term lasted until 1720. He was a wise and 
upright man, who did justice to all, though, if any- 
thing, favouring the popular party. But the personality 
of the governor was rapidly becoming of less and less 
consequence to New York as the city and province 
grew in size. The condition of the colony and the 
policy of the British King and Parliament were the 
really important factors of the problem. 

About this time there was a great influx of Germans 
from the Ehine provinces. They were poor peasants 
who had fled from before the French armies ; and while 
most went on into the country, a considerable number 
remained in New York, to add one more to the many 
elements in its population. As they were ignorant and 
poverty-stricken, the colonists of English, Dutch, and 
Huguenot blood looked down on and despised them, 
not wholly without reason. One feature of the settle- 
ment of America is that each mass of immigrants feels 
much distrust and contempt for the mass — -usually of 
a different nationality — which comes a generation later. 
Presbyterians from Scotland and Ireland began to strag- 
gle in, were allowed to build a church, and got a firm 
foothold. Tiiere was an insurrection of negro slaves, 
of which more anon. 



88 New York. 

The city was growing slowly. English, Dutch, and 
Huguenot names succeeded one another in the mayor- 
alty, showing that there was no attempt on the part of 
one race to exclude the others from their share of politi- 
cal power. The mass of the people were not very well 
off, and grudged taxes ; the annual expenditure of the 
city government was only about £300 and was covered 
by the annual income. The Assembly was already dab- 
bling in paper money, and it had been found necessary 
to pass poor-laws, and authorize the arrest of street beg- 
gars. 



Closing of Colonial Period. 1720-1764.. 89 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

THE CLOSING OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 1720-1764. 

In 1710 New York City contained some 6,000 inhabi- 
tants, in 1750 over 12,000, and at the outbreak of the 
Revolution about 20,000. It was a smaller town than 
either Boston or Philadelphia, with a society far less 
democratic, and divided by much sharper lines of caste. 
Strangers complained, then as now, that it was difficult 
to say what a typical New Yorker was, because New 
York's population was composed of various races, differ- 
ing widely in blood, religion, and conditions of life. In 
fact, this diversity has always been the dominant note 
of New York. No sooner has one set of varying ele- 
ments been fused together than another stream has 
been poured into the crucible. There probably has been 
no period in the city's growth during which the New 
Yorkers whose parents were born in New York formed 
the majority of the population ; and there never has 
been a time when the bulk of the citizens were of 
English blood. 

All this is in striking contrast to what has gone on in 
some other American cities, as, for instance, Boston. 
Colonial Boston was a Puritan English town, where the 
people were in all essentials wonderfully like one an- 
other. New York, however, never was really an English 
town, and its citizens always differed radically among 



90 New York. 

themselves in morals, manners, and physical well being, 
no less than in speech, blood, and creed. From time to 
time new ethnic elements have made their appearance, 
but the change has been not from one race to another, 
but from one mixture of races to another. 

Of course there are very sharp points of contrast 
other than those of mere size and growth between colo- 
nial New York and the New York of the United States. 
The three leading religious denominations of the pres- 
ent United States had but small and scanty fallowings 
in colonial times. In New York, just prior to the dev- 
olution, the Methodists and Baptists had but a small 
meeting-house apiece, and the handful of Catholics no 
recognized place of worship whatever; whereas at the 
present day the Methodists and Baptists form the two 
leading and characteristic denominations in the country 
districts of America, while Catholicism has forged to the 
front in the cities. 

In eighteenth-century New York both the Quakers 
and Jews had places of worship. The Germans had one 
Lutheran and one Calvinistic Church ; but the German 
pre-revolutionary immigrants did not produce many men 
of note, and their congregations remained small and un- 
progressive, their young men of spirit drifting off to 
other churches as they learned English. The Presby- 
terian congregations, on the other hand, throve apace, 
in spite of the petty and irritating persecution of the 
Episcopalians. They received many recruits from the 
Scotch and Scotch-Irish immigrants; and to a man they 
were all zealous upholders of popular rights, and trucu- 
lently defiant toward Great Britain. The Irish of that 
day were already a prominent element of New York 



Closing of Colonial Period. 1720-1704. 91 

life; but they were Presbyterians, not Catholics. They 
celebrated Saint Patrick's day with enthusiasm, and their 
toasts to Ireland and America, together with their 
scarcely veiled hostility to England, would not be out 
of place on similar occasions at present ; but some of 
their other toasts, such as those to the memory of King 
William and to the Protestant succession, would scarcely 
appeal to a Milesian patriot nowadays. 

The Huguenots were assimilated more easily than any 
other element of the population, and produced on the 
whole the highest grade of citizens. By the middle of 
the century the Hollanders likewise had begun to speak 
English. It was the official language of the colony, and 
the young men of push, who wished to make their mark 
in the world, had to learn it in order to succeed. The 
conservative men, the sticklers for old ways and customs, 
clung obstinately to Dutch ; and the consequence was 
that the energetic young people began to leave the 
Dutch churches, and to join the Episcopalian and Pres- 
byterian congregations in constantly increasing num- 
bers, — doing exactly what we see being done by the 
Scandinavian and German Lutherans in portions of the 
Northwest at the present day. The drain was so se- 
rious that in 1764, as the only means of putting a stop 
thereto, it was decided to hold the church services in 
both English and Dutch ; and forty years afterward 
Dutch was entirely abandoned. These measures arrested 
the decay of the Dutch Iieformea Church, and prevented 
its sharing the fate of total extinction which befell the 
Swedish Lutheran bodies -on the Delaware; but they 
were not taken in time to prevent the church from fall- 
ing much behind the place which it should have occu- 



92 New York. 

pied, taking into account the numbers, intelligence, and 
morality of its members, — for throughout the colonial 
period the Dutch remained the largest of the many 
elements in New York's population. 

As the wealthy Dutch and Huguenot families assimi- 
lated themselves to the English, they intermarried with 
them, and in many cases joined the Episcopal Church ; 
though a considerable number, especially among those 
whose affiliations were with the popular party, remained 
attached to one or the other of the Calvinist bodies. The 
Episcopal Church — or, as it was then the Church of 
England — was the fashiouable organization, the one to 
which the Crown officials belonged, and the centre round 
which the court party rallied. Among its members 
were to be found most of the influential people, — the 
manorial lords and large merchants, who controlled the 
affairs of the colony, and were the social and political 
leaders. It claimed to be in a sense the State Church, 
and had many immunities and privileges ; and as far 
as it could, though only in petty fashion, it oppressed 
the dissenting bodies, — notably the Presbyterians, who 
were not, like the Huguenots and Hollanders, protected 
by treaty. When King's College, now Columbia, was 
founded by the colony, it was put under the control 
of the Church of England, and was made in a small way 
a seat of Tory feeling. The various Protestant bodies 
were all filled with sour jealousy of one another, and 
were only united in cordial hatred of the Romanists, to 
whom they forbade entrance into the colony; and though 
they tolerated the presence of the Jews, they would not 
for some time let them vote. 

Social lines were very strongly marked, — the in- 



Closing of Colonial Period, n 20-11 g^. 93 

tensely aristocratic make-up of the town being in 
striking contrast to the democratic equality typical of a 
young American city of the same size nowadays. The 
manorial lords stood first in rank and influence, and in 
the respect universally accorded them. They lived at 
ease in the roomy mansions on their great tenant- 
. farmed estates ; and they also usually owned fine houses 
in either New York or Albany, and sometimes in both. 
Their houses were really extremely comfortable, and 
were built with a certain stately simplicity of style 
which contrasted very favourably with the mean or 
pretentious architecture of most New York buildings 
dating back to the early or middle portions of the pres- 
ent century. They were filled with many rooms, 
wherein a host of kinsmen, friends, and retainers might 
dwell ; and they had great halls, broad verandas, heavy 
mahogany-railed staircases, and huge open fireplaces, 
which in winter were crammed with roaring logs. The 
furniture was handsome, but stiff and heavy ; the books 
were few ; and there were masses of silver plate on the 
sideboards of the large dining-rooms. The gentry 
carried swords, and dressed in the artificial, picturesque 
fashion of the English upper classes; whereas the com- 
monalty went about their work in smocks or leather 
aprons. Near Trinity Church was the " mall," or prom- 
enade for the fashionable set of the little colonial 
town. By an unwritten law none but the members of 
the ruling class used it ; and on fine afternoons it was 
filled with a gayly dressed throng of young men aud 
pretty girls, the latter attended by their negro waiting- 
maids. Prominent in the crowd, were the scarlet coats 
of the officers from the English regiments, constantly 



'94 New York. 

quartered in New York because of the recurring French 
wars. The owners of these coats moved with an air of 
easy metropolitan superiority, a certain insolently pat- 
ronizing condescension, which always awakened both 
the admiration and the jealous anger of the provincial 
aristocrats. 1 The leading colonial families stood on 
the same social plane with the English country gentle- 
men of wealth, and were often connected by marriage 
with the English nobility ; but they could never forget 

— and were never permitted by their English friends 
to forget — that after all they were nothing but pro- 
vincials, and that provincials could not stand quite on 
an equality with the old-world people. 

The New York gentry, both of town and country, 
were fond of horse-racing, and kept many well-bred 
horses. They drove out in chariots or huge clumsy 
coaches with their coats of arms blazoned on the panels, 

— the ship of the Livingstons, the lance of the De 
Lauceys, the burning castle of the Morrises, and the 
other armorial bearings of the families of note being 

1 European travellers naturally enough often failed to understand 
the aristocratic constitution of the New York social and governmental 
systems. The local aristocrats seemed to them uncouth and provin- 
cial ; they were struck \>y the fact that they were often engaged in 
trade or other occupations which gentlemen were forbidden to enter 
by the European social code; and they saw that it was, of course, 
much easier than in the Old World for a man of energy to rise from 
the lowest to the highest round of the social ladder, no matter what his 
origin was. The aristocracy existed nevertheless. So to a London 
noble, Squire Western seemed only a boor, and he cordially hated all 
lords in return ; yet Squire Western and his fellows formed at home 
a true oligarchy. And the constitution of the rude country society in 
which he lived was as emphatically aristocratic as was that of the 
capital of England. 



Closing of Colonial Period. 1723-1764.. 95 

known to all men throughout the province. On a 
journey the gentry either went by water in their own 
sloops or else in these coaches, with liveried postilions 
and outriders ; and when one of the manorial lords 
eame to town, his approach always caused much ex- 
citement, the negroes, children, and white work-people 
gathering to gaze at the lumbering, handsomely painted 
coach, drawn by four huge Flemish horses, the owner 
sitting inside with powdered wig and cocked hat, scarlet 
or sombre velvet coat, and silver-hilted sword. In the 
town itself sedan chairs were in common use. There was 
;i little theatre where performances were given, now by a 
company of professional actors, and again by the officers 
of the garrison regiments; and to these performances as 
well as to the balls and other merry -makings the ladies 
sometimes went in chariots or sedan chairs, and some- 
times on their own daintily-shod feet. The people of 
note usually sent their negro servants, each dressed 
in the livery of his master, in advance to secure good 
seats. There was much dancing and frolicking, be- 
sides formal dinners and picnics ; sailing parties, and 
in winter skating parties and long sleigh rides were 
favourite amusements ; all classes took part eagerly in 
the shooting matches. The dinners were rather heavy 
entertainments, with much solemn toast-drinking ; and 
they often euded with boisterous conviviality, — for most 
of the men drank hard, and prided themselves on their 
wine cellars. Christmas and New Year's day were great 
festivals, the latter being observed in Dutch fashion, 
— the gentlemen calling at all the houses of their 
acquaintance, where they feasted and drank wine. 
Another Dutch festival of universal observance was 



g6 New York. 

Pinkster, held in the spring-tide. It grew to be es- 
pecially the negroes' day, all of the blacks of the city 
and neighbouring country gathering to celebrate it. 
There was a great fair, with merry-making and games 
of all kinds on the Common, where the City Hall park 
now is ; while the whites also assembled to look on, 
and sometimes to take part in the fan. Most of the 
house servants were negro slaves. 

The people of means sometimes had their children 
educated at home, and sometimes sent them to the little 
colleges which have since become Columbia and Prince- 
ton, — colleges which were then inferior to a good Eng- 
lish grammar school. Occasionally the very wealthy 
and ambitious sent their boys to Oxford or Cambridge, 
where the improved opportunities for learning were far 
more than counter-balanced by the fact that the boy 
was likely to come back much less fitted than his home- 
staying brother to play a man's part in the actual work 
of American life. The true colonial habit of thought, 
the deference for whatever came from the home country, 
whether rank or title, fashion or learning, was nearly 
universal, although the bolder and more independent 
spirits were already beginning to assume an attitude of 
protest against it. In truth it was very easy to get 
opinions ready made from the Old World, while it was 
hard work to fashion them out originally from the raw 
material ready at hand in the New. New Yorkers had 
as yet been given little opportunity for deep thought 
or weighty action. Provincial politics offered but a 
cramped and narrow field for vigorous intellects ; and 
to the native New Yorker, war held no higher possi- 
bilities than the leadership in a dashing foray against 



Closing of Colonial Period. 1720-1764. 97 

the Canadians and Indians, or the captaincy in a suc- 
cessful cruise among French and Spanish merchant- 
men. There was no home literature worthy of the 
name, and little chance for its immediate development ; 
and art was not much better off. 

The New York merchants and smaller landed pro- 
prietors stood next to the great manorial families ; they 
mixed with them socially, and often married among 
them, following their lead in matters political. The 
merchants lived in comfortable brick or stone houses, 
and owned large warehouses and stores of every de- 
scription. Many of them had great gardens round 
their homes ; for New York was still but a little country 
town. Nevertheless, as the years went by, its growth, 
sluggish at first, became more and more rapid. Coffee- 
houses were started ; there were good inns for the 
wealthy, and taverns for the poorer; and there were 
schools, a poor-house, and a jail. 

Next to the merchants came the middle class, — the 
small freeholders with whom the suffrage stopped short. 
They were the rank and file of the voters, and in politi- 
cal contests generally followed the banner of one or the 
other of the great families, from whom they were sepa- 
rated by a deep social gulf. Then came the class of 
free workmen ; and below these, — though as years went 
by, merging into them, — the very distinct class of un- 
free whites, the imported bond-servants, redemptioners, 
apprentices, and convicts, who had been sent to the 
colonies. These were by no means all criminals and 
paupers, though very many such were included among 
them. Some were honest, poor men, who could not 
get a living at home, and had no money wherewith to 

7 



98 New York. 

go abroad, and these were regularly sold for a term of 
years to make good their passage money. They were 
of many nationalities, — English, Irish, and Germans 
predominating, though there were some Scotch, Welsh, 
and Swiss. On the arrival of a ship containing them, 
they were usually duly advertised, the occupation — as 
tradesman, farmer, or labourer — for which they were 
best fitted being specified, and were then immediately 
sold at auction into what was simply slavery for a lim- 
ited period ; and as they were sometimes harshly treated 
they were very prone to run away. Judging by the 
advertisements in the colonial newspapers the runaway 
white bond-servants were almost as numerous as the 
runaway slaves. After their term of service was over, 
some of them became honest, hard-working citizens, 
while the others swelled the ranks of the idle, vicious 
semi-criminal class, clustering in the outskirts and 
alleys of the town. As a whole, this species of im- 
migrant was very harmful, and added a most unde- 
sirable element to the population. It may well be 
doubted if relatively to our total numbers, we have had 
any class of immigrants during the present century 
which as a class was so bad ; and indeed it is safe to say 
that in proportion, eighteenth-century New York had 
quite as much vice and vicious poverty within its 
limits as the present huge city; and most of the vice 
and poverty among the whites was due to this importa- 
tion of bond-servants and convicts. 

The negro slaves formed a very large portion of the 
town's population, — at times nearly half. — for over a 
century after it was founded ; then they gradually be- 
gan to dwindle in numbers compared to the whites, 



Closing of Colonial Period, mj-mt. 99 

for although they were retained as household servants, 
it was found that they were not fitted for manual and 
agricultural labour, as in the southern colonies. During 
the first half of the eighteenth century they were still 
very numerous, and were for the most part of African 
birth, being fresh from the holds of the Guinea slavers ; 
they were brutal, ignorant savages, and the whites were 
in constant dread of a servile insurrection. In 1712 
this fear was justified, at least partially, for in that year 
the slaves formed a wild, foolish plot to destroy all the 
whites ; and some forty of them attempted to put it into 
execution. Armed with every kind of weapon, they 
met at midnight in an orchard on the outskirts of the 
town, set fire to a shed, and assaulted those who 
came running up to quell the flames. In this way they 
killed nine men and wounded some others, before the 
alarm was given and the soldiers from the fort ap- 
proaching, put them to fight. They fled to the forests 
in tlfe northern part of the island ; but the militia, 
roused to furious anger, put sentries at the fords, and 
then hunted down the renegade negroes like wild 
beasts. Six, in their despair, slew themselves ; and 
twenty-one of those who were captured were shot, hung, 
or burned at the stake. 

This attempted revolt greatly increased the uneasi- 
ness of the white inhabitants, and was largely respon- 
sible for the ferocious panic of fear, rage, and suspicion 
into which they were thrown by the discovery of an- 
other plot among the negroes in 1741. During this 
panic the citizens went almost mad with cruel terror, 
and did deeds which make a dark stain on the pages 
of New York's history, — deeds which almost parallel 



ioo New York. 

those done in the evil days of the Salem witchcraft 
persecutions, save that in the New York case there 
really was some ground for the anger and resentment 
of the persecutors. Exactly how much ground there 
was, however, it is impossible to say. There is no 
doubt that many of the slaves, especially among those 
of African birth, were always vaguely hoping for, and 
perhaps planning for, the destruction of their masters, 
and that some of the bolder and more brutal spirits did 
actually indulge in furtive incendiarism, outrage, and 
attempted murder ; but there is no reason to suppose 
that the great mass of the blacks were ever engaged 
in the plot, or that there was ever any real danger of 
a general outbreak. Slave-owners, however, live always 
under the hair-hung sword; they know that they can 
take no risks, and that their very existence depends on 
the merciless suppression of every symptom of hostile 
discontent. 

During March 1741, there broke out in New York 
so many fires in quick succession, that it seemed cer- 
tain they were of incendiary origin ; and the conduct 
of a few of the slaves greatly excited the suspicions of 
the citizens. At the same time the indented servant- 
girl of a low tavern-keeper had been arrested, together 
with her master and mistress and two negroes, for com- 
plicity in a robbery. Proclamations offering rewards 
to whomever would give information concerning the 
supposed plot were read to her, and she suddenly 
professed herself aware of its existence. She as- 
serted that her master and mistress and a number of 
the poor, semi-criminal whites, together with a multi- 
tude of blacks, were all engaged therein ; and many of 



Closing of Colonial Period, mo-mt. 101 

the ignorant slaves when arrested strove in their terror to 
save their own necks by corroborating and embellishing 
all the wild statements she made. The whole of New 
York went into a mad panic, and scores of people were 
imprisoned and put to death on the strength of these 
flimsy accusations. Fourteen negroes were burned at 
the stake, twenty hanged, and seventy-one transported ; 
while of the twenty whites who were imprisoned, four 
were executed. Among the latter was a Catholic priest 
named Ury, who was condemned both for complicity in 
the negro plot to burn the town, and for having com- 
mitted the heinous crime of administering the rites of 
his religion; and on the double count, although as far 
as appears without a shred of damaging evidence being- 
produced against him, the unfortunate man was act- 
ually hung, protesting his innocence to the last. 1 This 
added the touch of cruel religious bigotry which alone 
was wanting to complete the gloom of the picture. 
At last, glutted with victims, the panic subsided, leaving 
behind it the darkest page in our annals. 

Besides this tragedy, the political struggles of colonial 
New York in the eighteenth century seem of small im- 
portance ; yet there was one incident worthy of note, 
because it involved the freedom of the press. The first 
newspaper published in the city was a small weekly, 
started in 1725, under the name of the "New York 
Gazette." It was the organ of the governor and aristo- 
cratic or court party. Nine years later a rival appeared 
in the shape of the " Weekly Journal," edited by a 
German immigrant named Zenger, and from the start 

1 It is barely possible that Ury was a non-juring Episcopalian priest 
instead of a Catholic. 



102 New York. 

avowedly the organ of the popular party. The royal 
governor at the time was a very foolish person named 
Cosby, appointed on the theory which then obtained, 
to the effect that a colonial governorship was to be 
used as a place for pensioning off any court favourite 
otherwise unprovided for, without reference to the result 
of his appointment upon the colony. He possessed a 
genius for petty oppression, which marked him for the 
especial hatred of the people. Zenger published a con- 
stant succession of lampoons, ballads, and attacks on 
all the Crown officials, the governing class, and finally 
even on Cosby himself. He was arrested and thrown 
into jail on the charge of libel ; and the trial, which 
occupied most of the summer of 1735, attracted great 
attention. The chief-justice at the time was one of 
the Morrises, who belonged to the popular party ; and as 
he was suspected of leaning to Zenger's side, he was 
turned out of office and replaced by one of the L)e 
Lanceys, the stoutest upholders of the Crown. De Lancey 
went to the length of disbarring Zenger's lawyers, so 
that he had to be defended by one imported from Phila- 
delphia. But the people at large made Zenger's cause 
their own, and stood by him resolutely ; while every 
ounce of possible pressure and influence from the Crown 
officials was brought to bear against him. The defence 
was that the statements asserted to be libellous were 
true. The attorney-general for the Crown took the 
ground that if true the libel was only so much the 
greater. The judges instructed the jury that this was 
the law ; but the jury refused to be bound, and acquitted 
Zenger. The acquittal, which definitely secured the 
complete liberty of the press, was hailed with clamorous 



Closixg of Colo aval Period. 1720-1764. 103 

joy by the mass of the population ; and it gave an im- 
mense impetus to the growth of the spirit of independ- 
ence. From this time on, the two parties were much 
more sharply defined than before. The court party, the 
faction of the Crown officials and of the bulk of the 
local aristocracy, included most of the Episcopalians and 
many of the Hollanders and Huguenots, while the rest 
of the population, including the Presbyterians, formed 
the popular party. The former often styled themselves 
Tories, and the latter Whigs, in imitation of the two 
English parties. Each faction was under the leadership 
of a number of the great landed families ; for even in 
the ranks of the popular party the voters still paid 
reverence to the rich and powerful manorial lords. 
These great families were all connected by marriage, 
and were all split up by bitter feuds and political jeal- 
ousies. The De Lanceys held the headship of the 
court, and the Livingstons of the popular party ; and 
the contest took on so strongly personal a colour that 
these two families almost gave their names to the 
factions with which they were respectively identified 
as leaders. 



i04 New York. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE UNREST BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 1764-1774. 

No sooner was the long succession of French wars closed 
l>y the conquest of Canada, than American history 
entered on a new stage. Hitherto the contests had 
been waged between European powers for the posses- 
sion of the various colonies, both the interests and the 
efforts of these colonies being of secondary importance. 
From this time on, however, the American settlements 
became themselves the chief factors in solving the 
problems of their own future, and the questions of 
policy hinged on the issues between them and the 
mother country. 

The colonial system, which at this time was common 
to all seafaring European nations, was essentially vicious, 
and could not possibly last when the colonies grew in 
strength. England did not treat her colonies excep- 
tionally ill ; on the contrary, she behaved much better 
toward them than the other European nations of that 
day did to theirs. If she had not done so, the re- 
volt again ' ' er power would have come far sooner: 
for no other nation had planted beyond the seas such a 
race of freemen as was growing up on the North Atlan- 
tic coast of America. They came from a people long 
accustomed to a considerable measure of liberty, and all 
their surroundings in their new home tended to foster 




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Before the Revolution. 1764-1774. 105 

an independent and self-reliant spirit. They would not 
have tolerated a despotism like that of France or Spain 
for a day ; and it was inevitable that they should event- 
ually try to throw off even England's milder yoke, 
unless she adopted a course of colonial policy which was 
at that time understood by none but the most far-seeing 
or lofty-minded. Nor, indeed, is it certain that the 
colonists themselves, split up as they were by their 
province lines into jarring fragments, would have been 
capable of appreciating and profiting by such a course of 
colonial policy, even had the mother country adopted it. 
The European theory of a colony was that it was 
planted by the home government for the benefit of the 
home government and home people, not for the benefit 
of the colonists themselves. Hardly any one grasped 
the grandeur of the movement by which the English- 
speaking race was to spread over the world's waste 
spaces, until a fourth of the habitable globe was in its 
hands, and until it became the mightiest race on which 
the sun has ever shone. Those in power did not think 
of the spread of a mighty people, and of its growth by 
leaps and bounds, but of the planting of new trading- 
posts ; they did not realize the elementary fact that if the 
men who stretch abroad the race limits by settlement 
and conquest are to be kept one with those who stay at 
home, they must be granted an equal share with the 
latter in administering the common government. The 
colony was held to be the property of the mother 
country, — property to be protected and well treated as a 
whole, but property nevertheless. Naturally the colo- 
nist himself was likewise held to occupy a similar posi- 
tion compared to the citizen of the home country. The 



106 New York. 

Englishman felt himself to be the ruler and superior of 
the American ; and even though he tried to rule wisely, 
and meant to act well toward the colonists, the fact 
remained that he considered them his inferiors, and that 
his scheme of government distinctly recognized them as 
such. The mere existence of such a feeling, and its 
embodiment in the governmental system, warranted a 
high-spirited people in revolting against it. 

Of coarse the colonists on their part did much that 
was blamable also. They would rarely make any sus- 
tained effort to help themselves if they could persuade 
England to make it for them. They knew she warred 
for their interest because it was her interest to do so; 
and they were glad to throw on her shoulders as much 
as possible of the burden of their defence. The colonial 
armies performed some notable feats of warfare; and for 
a short campaign the colonies Mere always willing to 
furnish thousands of stout and vigorous though ill-dis- 
ciplined soldiers. But they hated to pay their bills; 
they would never make provision for any sustained 
effort, nor carry through any far-reaching policy; they 
were impatient of restraint; and they wrangled perpet- 
ually among themselves. As a result, their parsimony, 
greed, Rnd selfishness, and their jealousy of one another, 
caused them at times — in spite of some heroic actions — 
to cut but sorry figures in the struggles with France. 
They swindled and overcharged the very troops sent out 
to protect them ; and their legislatures could with diffi- 
culty be persuaded to vote sufficient money to prosecute 
the wars with proper vigour. New York was vitally 
interested in seeing Panada cowed and the French in- 
trigues among the Indians definitely stopped; yet the 



Before the Revolution. 1764-1774. 107 

New York Assembly insisted that the whole expense of 
the conquest of Canada ought to come on the mother 
country, New England looked on unmoved when the 
French merely raided on New York; and New York sold 
arms to the savages who attacked New England. All 
the provinces were dependent on the British fleets for 
the defence of their open seaboard and widely scattered 
trade,- hut doubtless feeling that both trade and sea- 
board were menaced by foes that were primarily foes to 
Britain, not to America, they evinced no inclination to do 
their share in paying for the navy to which they trusted. 
On the other hand, it must be said that the citizens 
were much readier with their lives than their purses ; 
and though they did not share the expense of England's 
fleets, they furnished in the last colonial war nearly 
twenty thousand of the seamen who manned them. 

However, admitting all that can be urged against them 
does not alter the fact — by none more freely conceded 
than by English historians nowadays — that on the main 
question the mutinous provinces were in the right. 
They were in many ways well treated, but they were 
never treated as equals, and they were sometimes treated 
badly. They needed and wished, not mingled favours 
and injuries, but justice. There were many public men 
in England who strove to do right by the colonies ; but 
there were very many others who looked on their depend- 
encies purely from the standpoint of British interest. 
When in the warfare of factions and parties the latter 
wielded the power of government, the} r were certain to 
produce such intense irritation in the minds of Ameri- 
cans that even the non-fulfilment of their plans or the 
return of the friends of America to power, could not 



ioS New York. 

allay the ill feeling. There were numerous English 
statesmen of high rank and great influence who avow- 
edly wished to check and hamper the growth of the 
colonies ; who desired to stop the westward inarch of 
the settlers, and to keep the continent beyond the Alle- 
ghanies as a hunting-ground whereon savau.es might 
gather furs for British traders ; who forbade the build- 
ing up of American manufactures, and strove to keep 
the seaboard towns as trading- posts for the sole benefit 
of British merchants. The existence of such statesmen, 
and the ever-recurring probability of their taking the 
control of affairs, rendered it impossible for Americans 
to retain their loyalty to the home government. It is 
hard at the present time to realize how totally the 
theories of colonization and of colonial possessions have 
changed ; and it was our bwn Revolution, and the strug- 
gles which followed in its train that changed them. It 
is owing to the success of the United States that Aus- 
tralia and Canada of to-day are practically independ- 
ent countries as regards their internal concerns and 
their external relations with other nations in time of 
peace. The fiercest reactionary in Britain would not 
now dream of asking Australians and Canadians to 
submit to regulations to which even the most trucu- 
lent American patriot never thought of objecting before 
the Revolution. 

For the colonists were so used to the yoke that 
though they grew restless under it, they only dumbly 
knew it galled them, and could not tell exactly where. 
They submitted quietly to some forms of oppression 
which really amounted to heavy indirect taxation in 
the interest of British merchants and manufacturers, 



Before the Revolution. 1704-1774. 109 

and then revolted at a very small direct impost, on the 
ground that there should be no taxation without repre- 
sentation ; and all the while they were objecting almost 
as strenuously to paying their share of certain perfectly 
proper expenditures undertaken in their interest by the 
home country. The truth was that they were revolting 
agaiust the whole system, which they dimly felt to be 
wrong before they were able to formulate their reasons 
for so feeling ; the particular acts of oppression of 
which they complained were the occasions rather than 
the causes of the outbreak. The reasons for discontent 
had existed for many years, and their growth kept 
steady pace with the growth of the colonies. The 
French and Spanish wars had kept them in the back- 
ground, all other matters being swallowed up by the 
stress of the struggle with the common enemy ; but 
as soon as Canada was conquered, and the outside pres- 
sure taken off, the questions between the mother country 
and the colonies became of the first importance, and 
speedily showed signs of producing an open rupture. 

In truth, the rupture was as beneficial as it was ne- 
cessary, — always assuming that the alternative was the 
continuance of the old colonial system. Had England's 
King and Parliament been guided by the most far-seeing 
statesman, and had causes of irritation been avoided, 
and a constantly increasing measure of liberty and 
participation in the government allowed the colonists, 
it may have been that the empire would have been 
kept together. The revolt of America was not one of 
those historic events which are inevitable and fore- 
ordained, and in no way to be averted ; wise statesman- 
ship, and a temper in the British people willing to 



no New York. 

correspond, might have prevented it. But as the con- 
ditions actually were, it was a benefit. The acceptance, 
by both sides, of the theory of the supremacy of the 
mother country was quite enough to dwarf the intel- 
lectual and moral growth of the colonies. The " col- 
onial" habit of thought is a very unfortunate one. The 
deferential mental attitude toward all things connected 
with the old country, whether good or bad, merely 
because they are connected with the old country, is 
incompatible with free and healthy development. No 
colonist will ever do good original work so long as he 
thinks of the old country as " home." The mere fact 
that he so thinks, prevents his reaching the first rank 
as an American or Canadian or Australian, as the case 
may be, and yet entirely fails to make him even a 
second-rate Englishman. If the men who stay at home 
and the men who settle new lands can continue mem- 
bers of the same nation, ou a footing of perfect equality, 
this is the best possible outcome of the situation ; and 
the highest task of statesmen is to work out some" such 
solution. But if one party must remain inferior to the 
other, it is in the end better that they should separate, 
great though the evils of separation be. It is of in- 
calculable advantage to Oregon and Texas, no less than 
to New York and A r irginia, to be members of the 
mighty Federal Union ; but this is because the citizens 
of all four states stand on precisely the same footing. 
If Texas and Oregon were not given the full rights of 
the original thirteen commonwealths, freely and without 
the least reserve, it would be better for them to stand 
alone. But in reality we have become so accustomed 
to the new system that we do not conceive of the pos- 



Before the Revolution. 1764-1774. 111 

sibility of any failure to grant such rights. The feeling 
of equality among the different commonwealths is 
genuine and universal. The difference in their ages 
never occurs to any one as furnishing a ground for a 
feeling of superiority or the reverse ; it does not enter at 
all into the jealousies between the different States or 
sections. The fact that the new communities are off- 
shoots of the old is never taken into account in any 
way whatever. This feeling now seems to us part of 
the order of Nature ; and its very universality is apt 
to blind us to the immense importance of the struggle 
by which it was firmly established as a principle. Un- 
til the Eevolution, it may almost be said to have had 
no recognized existence at all. 

In every colony outside of New England and Vir- 
ginia there was a large Tory party ; and nowhere was 
it relatively larger than in New York. The peculiarly 
aristocratic structure of New York society. had a very 
great effect upon the revolutionary movement, which 
took on a two-fold character, being a struggle for Amer- 
ica against England on the one hand, and an uprising 
of the democracy against the local oligarchy on the 
other. The lowest classes of the population cared but 
little for the principles of either party, and sided with 
one or the other accordingly as their temporary inter- 
ests or local feuds and jealousies influenced them. 
They furnished to both Whigs and Tories the scoundrels 
who hung in the wake of the organized armies, hot for 
plunder and murder, — the marauders who carried on a 
ferocious predatory warfare between the lines or on the 
Indian frontier, and who took advantage of the general 
disorder to wreak their private spites and rob and out- 



ii2 New York. 

rage the timid, well-to-do people of both sides, with 
impartial brutality. A large number of the citizens, 
possibly nearly half, were but lukewarm adherents of 
either cause. Among them were many of the men of 
means, who were anxious to side with the winners, aud 
feared much to lose their possessions, aud a still greater 
number of men who were too indifferent and cold-hearted, 
too deficient in patriotism and political morality to care 
how the affair was decided. Among them were many 
men also who were of ultra-conservative mind, not 
yet far enough advanced in that difficult school which 
teaches how to combine a high standard of personal 
liberty with a high standard of public order. The 
bulk of the intelligent workiug-classes, the most truly 
American members of the colonial body politic, formed 
also the bulk of the popular party. Here also all the 
Presbyterians and the majority of the members of the 
Dutch Eeformed and Huguenot congregations naturally 
found their proper place. Very many of the gentry 
also belonged to it; and it was led by some of the great 
families, — the Livingstons, Schuylers, and others, — in- 
cluding all those whose pride of caste was offset by 
their belief in freedom, or was overcome by their pro- 
found Americanism, when caste and country came into 
conflict, Most of the Episcopalian clergy and the 
majority of their flocks, as well as a minority of the 
Dutch Eeformed congregations, belonged to the court 
party, as did the greater portion of the local aristocracy, 
led by the De Lanceys, De Peysters, and Philippses, 
and by the Johnsons, who ruled the Mohawk Valley in 
half-savage, half-feudal state. 

Of course the lines between these various classes 



Before the Revolution. 1764-1774. 113 

were not drawn sharply at the outset. In the begin- 
ning very few, even of the most violent extremists 
among the Whigs dared to hint at independence: while 
scarcely any of the most bigoted Tories upheld the 
Crown and the Parliament in all their doings. The 
power lay in the hands of the moderate men, who did 
not wish for extreme measures, until the repeated blun- 
ders and aggressions of the king and his advisers ex- 
asperated the people at huge beyond the possibility of 
restraint. The ablest and purest leaders of the New 
York patriots during the Revolution — men like 
Schuyler, Jay, Morris, and Hamilton — disliked mob- 
violence as much as they hated tyranny, and felt no 
sympathy with the extremists of their own party. 
An English statesman like Chatham, or an English 
statesman like Walpole, might have held these men, 
and therefore the American colonies, to their allegiance. 
But the necessary breadth and liberality were lacking, 
possibly in the temper of the age itself, certainly in the 
temper of Kiug George and his ministers. They per- 
severed in their course, offering concessions only when 
the time they would have been accepted was past. 
Then the break came, and the moderate men had to 
choose the side with which they wished to range them- 
selves ; and after some misgivings most of them — and 
the best of them — put love of their country above 
loyalty to their king, and threw in their lot with the 
revolutionary party. However, not a few of the leading 
families divided, sending sons into both camps. 

When in 1765 the Stamp Act was passed by the 
British Parliament, the popular party held the control 
of the New York legislature. Accordingly, among all 



ii4 New York. 

the colonial legislatures New York's stood foremost in 
stout assertion of the right of the colonies to the full 
enjoyment of liberty, and in protest against taxation 
without representation. The New York newspapers 
were especially fervid in denouncing the law, while the 
legislature appointed a committee to correspond con- 
cerning the subject with the legislative bodies of the 
other colonies. Finally the Stamp Act Congress met 
in New York, nine of the thirteen colonies being rep- 
resented, and voted a Declaration of Eights and an 
Address to the King. But the people themselves, acting 
through the suddenly raised, and often secret or semi- 
secret, organizations, took more effective .measures of 
protest than either congress or legislature. The most 
influential of these societies was that styled the " Sons 
of Liberty ; " all of them were raised in the first place 
with an excellent purpose, and numbered in their ranks 
many stanch and wise patriots, but like all such or- 
ganizations they tended to pass under the control of 
men whose violence better fitted them to raise mobs 
than to carry through a great revolution. 

The arrival in New York of the first ship bearing 
a cargo of the hated stamps produced intense excite- 
ment. The merchants met in a tavern and signed a 
non-importation agreement, in order to retaliate on the 
British merchants and manufacturers. The mob in- 
clined to rougher measures ; colonial New York was 
always a turbulent little town, thanks especially to the 
large number of seafaring folk among its inhabitants. 
The sailors had an especial antipathy to the soldiers of 
the garrison, and rows between them were frequent ; 
with more reason, they hated the press-gangs of the 



Before the Revolution. 1764-1774. 115 

British frigates, and often interfered to save their 
victims, with the result of producing actual riots, 
wherein bludgeons and cutlasses were freely used. 
This known turbulence of the townsfolk alarmed both 
the acting governor, Golden, — a loyal, obstinate, narrow 
minded man — and the commander of the troops in 
garrison, General Gage. As the time for putting the 
Stamp Act in force drew near, the governor took ref- 
uge in the fort on the south end of Manhattan Island, 
which was ostentatiously put in good condition, while 
the troops were made ready for instant action. It was 
hoped that these open preparations would awe the city ; 
but they produced only irritation. 

The act was to go into effect on November 1, 
and the ship carrying the stamps hove in sight on 
October 23. A couple of war vessels escorted it to a 
safe anchorage under the guns of the fort, while the 
flags on the shipping in the harbour were half-masted as 
a sign of grief and defiance, and a huge crowd of New 
Yorkers gathered on the wharves with every sign of 
rebellious anger. In the night, placards signed " Vox 
Populi" and "We dare" were posted all over town, 
threatening the persons and property of whoever dared 
use the stamps ; and the feeling was so violent and 
universal that not even the boldest attempted to 
meddle with the forbidden paper. November 1 was 
ushered in by the tolling of muffled bells ; in the even- 
iug a crowd gathered, under the lead of a band of the 
Sons of Liberty. ' The radical men were in control; and 
after some inflammatory speech-making the governor was 
hung in effigy on the common. Not satisfied with this, 
the crowd marched down to the fort, headed by a sailor 



n6 New York. 

carrying another eifigy of the governor in a chair on 
his liead; and this they proceeded to burn on the 
Bowling Green, under the guns of the fort, hammering 
at the gates of the latter and yelling defiance at the gar- 
rison. By this time they had gotten past all control, 
and not only broke into the governor's stable and burnt 
his chariot, but also sacked the house of the major of 
one of the garrison regiments, a man whom they re- 
garded as particularly obnoxious. Other houses were 
also attacked. 

The moderate men, including all the leaders who 
afterward, when the real strain came, showed genuine 
ability, utterly disapproved of this mob-violence and 
lawlessness ; and by their energetic conduct they suc- 
ceeded in staving off for the moment further action by 
the mob, which was much emboldened by the lack of 
resistance. Soon, however, the populace became once 
more worked up to the pitch of violence by the taunts 
and harangues of the radical leaders, — hot-headed 
men of small capacity and much energy, part patriot 
and part demagogue. They threatened to assault the 
fort; and the mayor and aldermen, to prevent civil 
war, earnestly besought the governor to give them the 
stamps for safe keeping. The humiliation of such a 
course was at first too much for the governor; but 
neither he nor the commander-in-chief, General Gage, 
possessed the iron temper fitted to grapple with such an 
emergency. After some delay they yielded, and sur- 
rendered the stamps to the municipal authorities, while 
the people at large celebrated their victory with wild 
enthusiasm, and felt a natural contempt for the gov- 
ernment they had overcome. The tyranny which im- 



Before the Revolution. 1704-1774. 117 

poses an unjust law, and then abandons the effort to 
enforce it for fear of mob-violence is thoroughly despi- 
cable. The least respectable form of oppression is that 
which is constantly miscalculating its own powers, and 
is never quite able to make up its own mind. 

However, the repeal of the Stamp Act produced such 
universal satisfaction in America that all outward signs 
of disloyalty to the Crown disappeared completely. 
New York received a new governor who behaved with* 
such wisdom and moderation, and showed such a con- 
ciliatory disposition, that the royalist or court party 
revived in full strength. In the struggle over the 
legislative elections of 1768, they won a complete vic- 
tory, led by the De Lanceys, — the Livingston or popular 
party being in a decided minority in the Assembly. It 
was this legislature, elected in the moment of reaction, 
that was in session when the Revolution broke out ; and 
it lagged so far behind the temper of the people that it 
was finally set aside, and the initial work of the Revo- 
lutionary government committed to various improvised 
bodies. 

In their joy over the repeal of the Stamp Act the cit- 
izens erected a monument to King George, — which the 
American soldiers pulled down in the early days of the 
Revolution, receiving .in consequence a severe rebuke 
from Washington, wdio he-irtily despised such exhibitions 
of childish spite. 

Even during these years of comparative loyalty, how- 
ever, there was plenty of unrest and disturbance. There 
was perpetual wrangling over the Billeting Act, by 
which Parliament strove to force the colonists to pay 
for the troops quartered in their midst; an act con- 



n8 New York. 

cerning which there was something to be said 011 both 
sides. If England was to assume the burden of the 
common defence, she had to quarter her troops in 
the colonial towns, and it seemed fair that the colonists 
should pay for their quarters. On the other hand, if 
the colonists were not consulted in the matter, and if 
they were forced to pay for troops sent among them in 
time of peace, when no foreign enemy was to be feared, 
it looked much as if they were being made to support 
the very force that was to keep them in subjection. On 
the whole, the colonists were right in objecting to the 
presence of the troops in time of peace except on their 
own terms ; although they thereby estopped themselves 
from insisting that the mother country should do more 
than its share in protecting them in time of war. 
If, of two parties, one raises the army for common 
defence, the other cannot expect to have much to say 
about its disposal. 

The British troops in garrison naturally disliked the 
townsfolk, on whom in turn their mere presence acted 
as an irritant The soldiers when out of barracks and 
away from the control of their officers were always 
coming into collision with the mob, in which the sea- 
faring element was strong ; and the resulting riots not 
infrequently involved also the respectable mechanics 
and small traders, and even the merchants and gentry. 
The great source of quarrel was the liberty pole. This 
had been erected on the anniversary of the king's birth, 
June 6, 1766, to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act; 
there was a great barbecue on the occasion, — an ox being- 
roasted whole on the common, — while hogsheads of 
punch and ale were broached, bonfires were lit, and amid 



Before the Revolution. 1764-1774. 119 

the booming of cannon and pealing of bells a flag was 
hoisted with the inscription, " The King, Pitt, and 
Liberty," — the colonists being enthusiastically devoted 
to their two great parliamentary champions, Pitt and 
Burke. 

The liberty pole was an eyesore to the soldiers in 
the fort, and its destruction or attempted destruction 
became one of their standing pastimes. Several times 
they succeeded, usually when they sallied out at night ; 
and then the liberty pole was chopped down or burnt 
up. The townsfolk, headed by the Sons of Liberty, 
always gathered to the rescue. If too late to save the 
pole, they put up another one, and stood guard over it ; 
if in time to attempt a rescue, a bloody riot followed. 
In the latter part of January, 1770, parties of soldiers 
and townsfolk fought a series of pitched battles in the 
streets, the riot lasting for two days. It began by a 
successful surprise on the part of the soldiers, who cut 
down the pole early one morning. The towmsfolk held 
an indignation meeting aud denounced vengeance on 
the soldiers, who retaliated by posting derisive placards 
on the walls of the fort and public buildings. A series 
of skirmishes ensued in which heads were broken, and 
men cut and stabbed, — the soldiers being usually over- 
come by numbers, all of the working-men and every 
sailor in town swarming out to assail the red-coats. 
Some of the hardest fighting occurred when a troop of 
soldiers attacked a number of sailors, who were rescued 
by some of the Liberty Boys who had been playing ball 
on the Common. Several persons were badly injured, 
and in one scuffle a sailor was thrust through with a 
bayonet, and slain ; after which his comrades, armed 



120 New York. 

with bludgeons, drubbed the soldiers into their bar- 
nicks. The upshot was that the townsfolk were victo- 
rious, aud the liberty pole was not again molested. 

This was the iirst bloodshed in the struggle which 
culminated in the Eevolutiou. It occurred six weeks 
before the so-called " Boston Massacre," — an incident of 
the same kind, in which, however, the Americans were 
much less clearly in the right than they were in the 
New York case. Even in New York the soldiers had 
doubtless been sorely provoked by the taunts and jeers 
of the townsmen ; but there was absolutely no justifica- 
tion for their cutting down the liberty pole, and the 
New Yorkers were perfectly right in refusing to submit 
tamely to such an outrage. The chief fault seems to 
have lain with the garrison officers, who should have 
kept their men under restraint, or else have taken im- 
mediate steps to remedy the wrong they did in cutting 
down the pole. 

This rioting however produced no more than local 
irritation. After the repeal of the Stamp Act, the col- 
onies were not again stirred by a common emotion un- 
til the passage by Parliament of the Tea Act, avowedly 
passed, and avowedly resisted simply to test the prin- 
ciple of taxation. Its enactment was the signal for 
the Sons of Liberty and other societies — such as 
that of the Mohawks — to reorganize at once. In 
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, the sentiment was 
unanimous that the tea shipped from England should 
be thrown overboard or shipped back ; and Boston was 
the first to put the threat into execution. New York 
followed suit in April 1774, when the first tea ships 
reached the harbour, only to be boarded by an excited 



Before the Revolution. 1704-1774. 121 

multitude who heaved the tea-chests of one vessel into 
the harbour, and forced the other to stand out to sea 
without lauding her cargo. 

The measures of retaliation against Boston taken by 
the British government, aroused in New York the 
liveliest sympathy for the New Euglanders. The radical 
party, acting without any authority through a self-con- 
stituted Committee of Vigilance, began to correspond 
with the Boston extremists ; and this gave alarm to the 
moderate men, who at once aroused themselves and 
took the matter into their own hands, so as not to be 
compromised by unwise and hasty action. Accord- 
ingly, to the chagrin of the extremists, they promptly 
disowned and repudiated the action of the vigilance 
committee. At the same time they thoroughly dis- 
trusted the zeal of their aristocratic legislature. They 
therefore convoked a meeting of the freeholders, who 
with due solemnity elected a Committee of Fifty-one 
to correspond with the other colonies. This commit- 
tee was entirely in the hands of the moderate men, 
even containing in its ranks several Tories and very few 
of the radicals, and did a piece of work of which it is dif- 
ficult to over-estimate the importance ; for it was the 
first authoritatively to suggest the idea of holding the 
first Continental Congress. This suggestion is said to 
have been adopted by the advice of John Jay, a young 
lawyer of good Huguenot family. Under the auspices 
of the committee the freeholders chose five delegates to 
this congress, — including John Jay, and as a matter of 
course, one of the Livingstons also. The radicals and 
extremists, the Sons of Liberty and the old Committee 
of Viirilance, with the Committee of Mechanics — the 



122 New York. 

body supposed to represent most nearly the unenfran- 
chised classes — were greatly discontented with the 
moderate measures of the Committee of Fifty-one ; and 
there was very nearly a rupture between the two wings 
of the patriot party. By mutual concessions this was 
averted ; and the delegates were elected without op- 
position. They took their full part in the acts of the 
first Continental Congress during its short session, the 
colony being thereby committed to the common cause. 
At the same time, when the Committee of Fifty-one 
went out of existence its place was taken by another, 
differing in little more than the fact of having sixty 
members. 



The Revolutionary War. i775-i7ss. 123 



CHAPTER X. 

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 1775-1783. 

The year 1775 was for New York City one of great 
doubt and anxiety. All classes had united in sending 
delegates to the first Continental Congress. The most 
ardent supporters of the Crown and Parliament were op- 
posed to the Stamp Act and Tea Act, and were anxious 
to protest against them, and to try to brings about a 
more satisfactory understanding between the mother 
country and her colonies. On the other hand the pop- 
ular party as yet shrank from independence. The men 
who thus early thought of separation from Britain were 
in a small and powerless minority ; indeed, they were 
but a little knot of republican enthusiasts, who for 
several years had been accustomed at their drinking- 
bouts to toast the memory of the famous English 
regicides. 

With the summoning of the second Continental 
Congress this unity disappeared, as the Whigs and Tories 
began to drift in opposite ways, — the one party toward 
violent measures witli separation in the background, 
the other toward reconciliation even at the cost of 
submission. A Tory mob tried to break up the meeting 
at which delegates to the second Congress were chosen, 
and were only driven off after a number of heads had 
been broken. 



124 New York. 

New York still remained doubtful. In fact, all of 
the colonies outside of Virginia and New England — 
although containing strong patriot parties, animated by 
the most fiery zeal — were as a whole somewhat luke- 
warm in the Revolution, for they contained also large 
Tory, and still larger neutral elements in their midst. 
If left to themselves it is even doubtful if at this pre- 
cise time they would have revolted ; they were pushed 
into independence by the Virginians and New Eng- 
landers. Not only was the Tory element in New York 
very large, but there was also a powerful body of 
Whigs — typified by Schuyler and Gouverneur Morris 
— who furnished very able soldiers and statesmen when 
the actual fighting broke out, but who were thoroughly 
disgusted by the antics of the city mob ; and though 
the major portion of this mob was rabidly anti-British 
as far as noise went, it was far more anxious to maltreat 
unhappy individual Tories than to provoke a life and 
death struggle with the troops and war-ships of the 
British king. Nor must it be forgotten that there were 
plenty of Tories in the mob itself, and these among the 
most abandoned and violent of the city's population. 

The provincial legislature was as a body actively 
loyal to the king. But, in spite' of the presence of the 
large Tory and neutral elements, the revolutionary party 
■was unquestionably in the lead among the people, and 
contained the most daring spirits and the loftiest minds 
of the colony. There is much to admire in the resolute 
devotion which many tens of thousands of Loyalists 
showed to the king, whose cause they made their own; 
and there is much to condemn in the excesses com- 
mitted by a portion of the popular party. Neverthe- 



The Revolutionary War. 1775-nso. 125 

less, as in the great English civil war of the preceding 
century, the party of liberty was the party of right. 
The purest and ablest New Yorkers were to be found 
in the ranks of the revolutionists ; for keen-eyed and 
right thinking men saw that on the main issue justice 
was with the colonists. The young men of ardent, 
generous temper, such as Alexander Hamilton, John 
Jay and Gouverneur Morris, found it impossible to 
side with the foreign party. They were Americans, 
freemen, conscious that they deserved to stand on a 
level with the best of any land ; and they could not 
cast in their lot with the party which held as a cardinal 
point of its creed the doctrine of their inferiority. 

The mass of quiet, good, respectable people, of conser- 
vative instincts and rather dull feelings, might rest 
content with being treated as inferiors, if on the whole 
they were treated well ; might submit to being always 
patronized and often bullied, if only they were pro- 
tected ; might feel they owed an honest debt of grati- 
tude to their champions in former wars ; and might 
shrink from enduring the hundred actual evils of civil 
conflict merely for the sake of protesting against the 
violation of certain abstract rights and principles ; but 
the high-spirited young men, the leaders iii thought and 
action, fixed with unerring certainty upon the central 
and vital truth of the situation. They saw that the 
struggle, when resolved into its ultimate elements, was 
to allow Americans the chance for full and free develop- 
ment, uncramped by the galling sense of admitted 
inferiority. The material benefits conferred by the con- 
tinuance of British rule might or might not offset the 
material disadvantages it involved ; but they could not 



126 New York. 

weigh against the evils of a system which dwarfed tlie 
character and intellect, — a system which condemned all 
colonists to remain forever in the second rank, which 
forbade their striving for the world's great prizes, unless 
they renounced their American birthright, and which 
deprived them of those hopes that especially render life 
worth living in the eyes of the daring and ambitious. 
To their free, bold spirits, the mere assumption of their 
inferiority was an intolerable grievance, as indeed it has 
ever been esteemed by the master races of the world. 
Sooner than submit, in ignoble peace and safety, to 
an order of things which would have stunted the moral 
and mental growth of the country, they were willing to 
risk not only the dangers of war with the British king, 
but the far worse dangers of disorder, violence, anarchy, 
and a general loosening of the social bonds among 
Americans themselves. The event-proved their wisdom. 
Yet the dangers were very real and great. The country 
was still in the gristle ; the thews had not hardened. 
There had been much lawlessness, in one quarter and 
another, already ; and the long struggle of the Revolu- 
tion produced hideous disorganization. It is impossible 
to paint in too dark colours the ferocity of the struggle 
between the Whigs and Tories; and the patriot mobs, 
either of their own accord or instigated by the Sons 
of Liberty and kindred bodies, often took part in pro- 
ceedings which were thoroughly disgraceful. New York 
had her full share of these mob-outbreaks during the 
summer of 1775. The lawyers, pamphleteers, and news- 
paper writers, who contributed so largely to arouse the 
people, also too often joined to hound the populace on 
to the committal of outrages. The mob broke into and 



The Revolutionary War. i775-i7ss. 127 

plundered the houses of wealthy Loyalists, rode Tunes 
ou rails, or tarred, feathered, and otherwise brutally mal- 
treated them, and utterly refused to allow to others the 
liberty of speech and thought they so vociferously de- 
manded for themselves. They hated and threatened the 
Episcopalian, or Church of England, clergy, because of 
that part of the liturgy in which the king was prayed 
for; and finally the Episcopalian churches had to be 
closed for fear of them. They drove off the Tory presi- 
dent of King's (now Columbia) College, and joined with 
a Connecticut mob to wreck the office of the Loyalist 
newspaper. It is to their credit, however, that there 
was little interference with the courts of justice. They 
did not come into collision with the soldiers of the 
garrison, and the latter were permitted to embark for 
Massachusetts Bay, where hostilities had fairly begun; 
but they refused to allow any stores or munitions of 
war to be shipped to the beleaguered garrison at Boston. 
There were frequent rows with the boats' crews of the 
frigates in the bay ; once with the result of a broadside 
being fired into the town by an affronted man-of-war. 

In spite of these disturbances, New York still re- 
mained reluctant to burn her boats, and throw in her 
lot once for all with the patriots. Both Washington, 
on his way to take command of the American army at 
Boston, and Tryon, the royal governor, were received 
with the same formal tokens of respect. Meanwhile 
business was at a standstill, and a third of the inhabi- 
tants had left the town. 

By the beginning of the year 1776 the real leaders of 
the city and province, the men of mark, and of proved 
courage and capacity, saw that all hope of compromise 



128 New York. 

was over. They bad been disgusted with the turbu- 
lence of the mob, and the noisy bragging and threaten- 
ing of its leaders, — i'or the most part frothy men, like 
Isaac Sears, who sank out of ken when the days of 
rioting passed, and the grim, weary, bloody years of 
fighting were ushered in; but they were infinitely more 
disgusted with the spirit of tyrannous folly shown by 
the King and Parliament. The only possible outcome 
was independence. 

The citizens had become thoroughly hostile to the 
Tory Colonial Assembly, and had formally set it aside 
and replaced it, first by a succession of committees, and 
then by a series of provincial congresses, corresponding 
to the central Continental Congress. The mob never 
controlled these congresses, whose leaders were men 
like Schuyler, Van Zandt, Van Cortlandt, Jay, the Liv- 
ingstons, the Morrises, the Van Rensselaers, the Lud- 
lows, — representatives of the foremost families of the 
New York gentry. 1 When the Provincial Congress, with 
unanimity and the heartiest enthusiasm, ratified the 
Declaration of Independence, it was evident that the 
best men in New York were on the Revolutionary 
side. 

In January, 1776, Washington sent one of his gene- 
rals to take command in New York, and in April he 
himself made it his headquarters, having at last driven 

filenames of the members of these committees and provincial 
congresses are English. Dutch, Huguenot, Scotch, Irish, and German , 
the English in the lead, with the Dutch coming next. Many of the 
families were represented by more than one individual : thus of the 
Livingstons there were Walter, Peter Van Rrugh, Robert L., and 
Philip ; of the Ludlows, Gabriel and William ; of the Beekmans, 
David and William ; of the Roosevelts, Isaac and Nicholas ; etc. 



The Revolutionary War. 1775-1733. 129 

the enemy from Boston. Soon the motley levies of the 
patriot army were thronging the streets, — some in 
homespun or buckskin, a few in the dingy scarlet they 
had worn in the last French war, Marylanders in green 
hunting-shirts, Virginians in white smocks, militia in 
divers uniforms from the other colonies, and Washing- 
ton's guards, the nucleus of the famous Continental 
troops of the line, in their blue and buff. All New 
York was in a ferment ; and the ardent young patriots 
were busy from morning till night in arming, equipping, 
and drilling the regiments that made up her quota. 1 

The city was in no state to resist a siege, or an attack 
by a superior force. Her forts, such as they were, would 
not have availed against any foe more' formidable than 
a light frigate or heavy privateer. The truth was that 
the United States — for such the revolted colonies had 
become — were extremely vulnerable to assault. Their 
settled territory lay in a narrow belt, stretching for a 
thousand miles along the coast. Its breadth was but a 
hundred miles or so, in most places ; then it faded off, 
the inland frontier lying vaguely in the vast, melan- 
choly, Indian-haunted forests. The ferocious and un- 
ending warfare with the red woodland tribes kept the 
thinly scattered pioneers busy defending their own 
hearthstones, and gave them but scant breathing spells 
in which to come to the help of their brethren in the 
old settled regions. The eastern frontier was the coast- 

1 Tlie younger men among the leading city families furnished most 
of the captains for the city regiments, — among them being Henry S. 
Livingston, Abraham Van Wyck. John Berrian, John J. Roosevelt, 
and others Many of the most distinguished, however, had themselves 
risen from the ranks. 

9 



130 New York. 

line itself, which was indented by countless sounds, 
bays, and harbours, and here and there broken by great 
estuaries or tide-water rivers, which could carry hostile 
fleets into the heart of the land. The bulk of the popu- 
lation, and all the chief towns, lay in easy striking dis- 
tance from the sea. Almost all the intercolonial trade 
went along the water-ways, either up and down the 
rivers, or skirting the coast. There was no important 
fortress or fortified city ; no stronghold of note. A war 
power having command of the seas possessed the most 
enormous advantage. It menaced the home trade almost 
as much as the foreign, threatened the whole exposed 
coast-line, — and therefore the settled country which lay 
alongside it, — could concentrate its forces wherever 
it wished, and could penetrate the country at will. The 
revolted colonists had no navy, while the mother coun- 
try possessed the most powerful in the world. She 
was fourfold their superior in population, and a hun- 
dred-fold in wealth ; she had a powerful standing army, 
while they had uone. Moreover, the colonists' worst foes 
were those of their own household. The active Tories 
and half-hearted neutrals formed the majority of the 
population in many districts, — including Long Island 
and Staten Island. The Americans were then a race of 
yeomen, or small farmers, who were both w T arlike in 
temper and unmilitary in habits. They were shrewd, 
brave, patriotic, stout of heart and body, and proudly 
self-reliant, but imptaient of discipline, and most un- 
willing to learn the necessity of obedience. Their notion 
of war was to enlist for a short campaign, usually after 
the hay was in, and to return home by winter, or sooner, 
if their commanding officers displeased them. They 



The Revolutionary War. nis-nss. 131 

seemed unable to appreciate the need of sustained effort. 
The jealousies of the different States and their poverty 
and short-sighted parsimony, the looseness of the Fed- 
eral tie, the consequent impotence of the central gov- 
ernment, and the radical unfitness of the Continental 
Congress as a body to conduct war, all combined to 
render the prospects of the patriots gloomy. Only the 
heroic grandeur of Washington could have built up 
victory from these jarring elements. 

It was therefore natural for the patriot party of 
New York to look before it leaped ; but the leap once 
taken, it never faltered. No other State north of South 
Carolina was so harried by the forces of the king; and 
against no other State did they direct such efforts or 
send such armies, — armies which held portions of it 
to the close of the war. Yet the patriot party re- 
mained firm throughout, never flinching through the long 
years, cheering the faint-hearted, crushing out the Tories, 
and facing the enemy with unshaken front. 

Early in the summer a great armament began to 
gather in the lower bay ; a force more numerous and 
more formidable than the famous Armada which nearly 
two centuries before had sailed from Spain against 
England. Scores of war-ships of every kind, from the 
heavy liner, with her tiers of massive cannon, to the 
cutter armed with a couple of light cannon, and hun- 
dreds of transports and provision-ships began to arrive, 
squadron by squadron. Aboard them was an army of 
nearly forty thousand fighting-men. A considerable 
number were Hessians, and other German troops, hired 
out by the greedy and murderous baseness of the 
princelets of Germany. The Americans grew to feel a 



132 New York. 

peculiar hatred fur these Hessians, because of the rav- 
ages they committed, and because of the merely mer- 
cenary nature of their services ; but the wrong lay not 
with the poor, dull-witted, hard-fighting boors, but with 
their sordid and contemptible masters. 

With the near approach of this great army the Tories 
began plotting ; and most rigorous measures were taken 
to stamp out these plots. For some reason the lower 
class of liquor sellers were mostly Tories, and many of 
the plots were found to have their origin among them 
or their customers. The Loyalist gentry had for the 
most part fled to the British lines. Those who re- 
mained behind — including both the mayor and ex-mayor 
of the city — were force'd to take a stringent oath of 
allegiance to the Continental Congress and the new na- 
tion. The Tory plots were not mythical ; one was 
unearthed which aimed at nothing- less than the abduct- 
ing or killing of Washington, — the ring leader, Thomas 
Hickey, an Irish soldier who had deserted from the 
royal army, being hanged for his villany. 

Washington saw the hopelessness of trying to defend 
New York with the materials he had, against such a 
force as was coming against it ; and it was proposed to 
burn the town and retire so that the king's troops 
might gain nothing by the capture. This was un- 
doubtedly the proper conise to follow, from a purely 
military standpoint ; but the political objections to its 
adoption were insuperable. Washington laboured un- 
ceasingly at the almost hopeless task of perfecting the 
discipline of his raw, ill-armed, ill provided, jealousy- 
riven army , and he put down outrages, where he 
could, with a heavy hand Nevertheless, many of the 



The Revolutionary War. 1775-nss. 133 

soldiers plundered right and left, treating the property 
of all Loyalists as rightfully to be confiscated, and often 
showing small scruple in robbing wealthy Whigs under 
pretence of mistaking them for Tories. 

At last, in mid-August, the British general, Lord Howe, 
made up his mind to strike at the doomed city. He 
landed on Long Island a body of fifteen or twenty thou- 
sand soldiers, — English, Irish, and German. 1 The Amer- 
ican forces on the island were not over half as numerous, 
and were stationed in the neighbourhood of Brooklyn. 
Some of the British frigates had already ascended the 
Hudson to the Tappan Sea, and had cannonaded the 
town as they dropped clown stream again, producing a 
great panic, but doing little damage. The royal army 
was landed on the 22d : but Lord Howe, a very slow, 
easy-going man, did not deliver his blow until five days 
later. The attack was made in three divisions, early 
in the morning, and was completely successful. The 
Americans permitted themselves to be surprised, and 
were out-generalled in every way. Not half the force 
on either side was engaged. Some of the American 
troops made but a short stand; others showed a des- 
perate but disorderly valour. About two thousand of 
them were killed, wounded, or captured, principally the 
latter ; while the British loss was less than four hundred, 

1 It is a curious fact that in the Revolutionary War the Germans 
and Catholic Irish should have furnished the hulk of the auxiliaries 
to the regular English soldiers ; for as the English is the leading 
strain in our blood, so the German and the Irish elements come next. 
The Maryland Catholics, and most of the German settlers, were stout 
adherents of the Revolutionary cause. The fiercest and most ardent 
Americans of all, however, were the Presbyterian Irish settlers and their 
descendants. 



134 New York. 

the battle being won without difficulty. Howe seem- 
ingly had the remainder of the American army com- 
pletely at his mercy, for it was cooped up on a point 
of land which projected into the water. But he felt 
so sure of his prey that he did not strike at once ; and 
while he lingered and made ready, Washington, who 
had crossed over to the scene of disaster, perfected his 
plans, and by a masterly stroke ferried the beaten army 
across to New York during the night of the 29th. The 
following morning the king's generals woke to find 
that their quarry had slipped away from them. 

The discouragement and despondency of the Ameri- 
cans were very great, Washington almost alone keeping 
up heart. It was resolved to evacuate New York ; 
the chief opponent of the evacuation being General 
George Clinton, a hard-fighting soldier from Ulster 
county, where his people of Anglo-Irish origin stood 
well, having intermarried with the Tappans and De 
Witts of the old Dutch stock. Clinton did not belong 
to the old colonial families of weight, being almost the 
only New York Revolutionary leader of note who did 
not ; and in consequence they rather looked down on 
him, while he in turn repaid their dislike with inter- 
est. He was a harsh, narrow-minded man, of obstinate 
courage and considerable executive capacity, very am- 
bitious, and a fanatical leader of the popular party in 
the contest with the Crown. 

On September 15, Howe, having as usual lost a 
valuable fortnight by delay, moved against Manhattan 
Island. His troops landed at Kip's Bay, where the 
Americans opposed to them, mostly militia, broke in 
disgraceful panic and fled before them Washington 



The Revolutionary War 1775-17 sj. 135 

spurred to the scene in a frenzy of rage, and did his 
best to stop the rout, striking the fugitives with his 
sword, and hurling at them words of bitter scorn ; but 
it was all in vain, the flight could not be stayed, and 
Washington himself was only saved from death or 
capture by his aides-de-camp, who seized his bridle- 
reins and forced him from the field. 

However, Washington's acts and words had their 
effect, and as the Americans recovered from their panic 
they became heartily ashamed of themselves. The 
king's troops acted with such slowness that the Ameri- 
can divisions south of Kip's Bay were able to march 
past them unmolested. These divisions, on their re- 
treat, were guided by a brilliant young officer, Aaron 
Burr, then an aide-de-camp to the rough, simple-hearted 
old wolf-killer General Putnam ; and the rear was pro- 
tected by Alexander Hamilton and his company of 
New York artillerymen, who in one or two slight skir- 
mishes beat off the advance guard of the pursuers. 

Washington drew up his army on Haarlem Heights, 
and the next day inflicted a smart check on the enemy. 
An American outpost was attacked and driven in by the 
English light troops, who were then themselves-attacked 
and roughly handled by the Connecticut men and Vir- 
ginians. They were saved from destruction by some 
regiments of Hessians and Highlanders ; but further 
reinforcements for the Americans arrived, and the royal 
troops were finally driven from the field. About a hun- 
dred Americans and nearly three times as many of their 
foes were killed or wounded 



[t £ 

8 

much to put the Americans in hfcart. 



than a severe skirmish ; but it Afas %W^rj|^Yft^itdi 



136 New York. 

Besides, it was a lesson to the king's troops, and 
made Howe even more cautious than usual. For an 
entire month he remained fronting Washington's lines, 
which, he asserted, were too strong to be carried by- 
assault. Then the rough sea-dogs of the fleet came to 
his rescue, with the usual daring and success of British 
seamen. His frigates burst through the obstructions 
which the Americans had fondly hoped would bar the 
Hudson, and sailed up past the flanks of the patriot 
army ; while the passage to the Sound was also forced. 
Washington had no alternative but to retreat, which he 
did slowly, skirmishing heavily. At White Plains, Howe 
drove in the American outposts, suffering more loss than 
he inflicted. But a fortnight later, in mid-November, 
a heavy disaster befell the Americans. In deference to 
the wishes of Congress, Washington had kept garrisons 
in the two forts which had been built to guard the 
Hudson, and Howe attacked them with sudden energy. 
One was evacuated at the last moment ; the other was 
carried by assault, and its garrison of nearly three 
thousand men captured, after a resistance which could 
not be called more than respectable. Washington re- 
treated into New Jersey with his dwindling army of 
but little more than three thousand men. The militia 
had all left him long before; and his short-term '"regular" 
troops also went off by companies and regiments as their 
periods of enlistment drew to a close ; and the stoutest 
friends of America despaired. Then, in the icy winter, 
Washington suddenly turned on his foes, crossed the 
Delaware, and by the victory of Trenton, won at the 
darkest moment of the war, re-established the patriot 
cause. 



The Revolutionary War. 1775-1733. 137 

For the next seven years, New York suffered all the 
humiliations that fall to the lot of a conquered city. 
The king's troops held it as a garrison town, under 
military rule, and made it the headquarters of their 
power in America. Their foraging parties and small 
expeditionary columns ravaged the neighbouring coun- 
ties, not only of New York, but of New Jersey and 
Connecticut. The country in the immediate vicinity 
of the city was overawed by the formidable garrison and 
remained Loyalist ; beyond this came a wide zone or 
neutral belt where the light troops and irregular forces 
of both sides fought one another and harried the 
wretched inhabitants. Privateers were fitted out to 
cruise against the shipping of the other States, precisely 
as the privateers of the patriots had sailed from the 
harbour against the shipping of Britain in the earlier 
days of the war. 

Most of the active patriots among the townsfolk had 
left the city; only the poor and the faint-hearted re- 
mained behind, together with the large Tory element, 
and the still larger portion of the population which 
strove to remain neutral in the conflict. This last di- 
vision contained the only persons whose conduct must 
be regarded as thoroughly despicable. Emphatically 
the highest meed of praise belongs to the resolute, high- 
minded, far-seeing men of the patriot party, — as distin- 
guished from the mere demagogues and mob leaders 
who, of course, are to he found associated with every 
great popular movement. We can also heartily respect 
the honest and gallant Loyalists who sacrificed all by 
their devotion to the king's cause. But the selfish time- 
servers, the timid men, and those who halt between two 



138 New York. 

burdens, and can never make up their minds which side 
to support in any great political crisis, are only worthy 
of contempt. 

The king's troops were not cruel conquerors; but 
they were insolent and overbearing, and sometimes 
brutal. The Loyalists were in a thoroughly false posi- 
tion. They had drawn the sword against their country- 
men; and yet they could not hope to be treated as 
equals by those for whom they were fighting. They 
soon found to their bitter chagrin that their haughty 
allies regarded them as inferiors, and despised an Amer- 
ican Tory almost as much as they hated an American 
Whig. The native army had not behaved well in the 
half-Tory city of New York; but the invading army 
which drove it out behaved much worse. The soldiers 
broke into and looted the corporation, the college, 
and the small public libraries, hawking the books about 
the streets, or exchanging them for litpior in the low 
saloons. They also sacked the Presbyterian, Dutch 
Reformed, and Huguenot churches, which were later 
turned into prisons for the captured Americans; while 
on the other hand, the Episcopalian churches, which 
had been closed owing to the riotous conduct of the 
patriot mob, were re-opened. The hangers-on of the 
army, — the camp-followers, loose women, and the like, — 
formed a regular banditti, who infested the streets after 
dark, and made all outgoings dangerous. There was a 
completely organized system of gigantic jobbery and 
swindling, by which the contractors and commissaries, 
and not a few of the king's officers as well, were en- 
riched at the expense of the British government ; and 
when they plundered the government wholesale, it was 



The Revolutionary War. ms-nss. 139 

not to be supposed that they would spare Tories. The 
rich Royalists, besides of course all the Whigs, had their 
portable property, their horses, provisions, and silver 
taken from them right and left, — sometimes by bands 
of marauding soldiers, sometimes by the commissaries, 
but always without redress or compensation, their repre- 
sentations to the officers in command being scornfully 
disregarded. They complained in their bitter anger 
that the troops sent to reconquer America seemed bent 
on campaigning less against the rebels than against the 
king's own friends and the king's own army-chest. 
Many of the troops lived at free quarters in the private 
houses, behaving well or ill according to their individual 
characters. 

A few days after New York was captured it took fire, 
and a large portion of it was burnt up before the flames 
were checked. The British soldiers were infuriated by 
the belief that the fire was the work of rebel incendi- 
aries, and in the disorganization of the day they cut 
loose from the control of their officers and committed 
gross outrages, bayoneting a number of men, both Whigs 
and Tories, whom on the spur of the moment they ac- 
cused of being privy to the plot for burning the city. 
Two or three years afterward there was another great 
fire, which consumed much of what the first had spared. 

On the day of this first fire an American spy, Nathan 
Hale, was captured. His fate attracted much attention 
on account of his high personal character. He was a 
captain in the patriot army, a graduate of Yale, and 
betrothed to a beautiful girl ; and he had volunteered 
for the dangerous task from the highest sense of duty. 
He was hanged the following morning, and met his 



i4-o New York. 

death with quiet, unflinching firmness, his last words 
expressing- his regret that he had but one life to lose for 
his country. He was mourned by his American com- 
rades as deeply and sincerely and with to the full as 
much reason as a few years later Andre* was mourned 
by the officers of the king. 

Four or five thousand American soldiers were captured 
in the battles attending the taking of New York ; and 
thenceforward the city was made the prison-house of all 
the captured patriots. The old City Hall, the old sugar - 
house of the Livingstons (a gloomy stone building, five 
stories high, with deep narrow windows), and most of 
the non-Episcopal churches were turned into jails, and 
packed full of prisoners. It was a much rougher age than 
the present ; the prisons of the most civilized countries 
were scandalous even in peace, and of course prisoners 
of war fared horribly. The king's officers as a whole 
doubtless meant to behave humanely ; but the provost- 
marshal of New York was a very brutal man, and the 
cheating commissaries who undertook to feed the prison- 
ers made large fortunes by furnishing them with spoiled 
provisions, curtailing their rations, and the like. The 
captives were huddled together in ragged, emaciated, 
vermin-covered and fever-stricken masses ; while disease, 
bad food, bad water, the cold of winter, and the stifling 
heat of summer ravaged their squalid ranks. Every 
morning the death-carts drew up at the doors to receive 
the bodies of those who during the night had died on 
the filthy straw of which they made their beds. The 
prison-ships were even worse. They were evil, pestilent 
hulks of merchantmen or men-of-war, moored mostly 
in Wallabout Bay ; and in their noisome rotten holds 



The Revolutionary War. nrs-nss. 141 

men died by hundreds, and were buried in shallow pits 
at the water's edge, the graves being soon uncovered by 
the tide. In after years many hogsheads of human bones 
were taken from the foul ooze to receive christian burial. 

So for seven dreary years New York lay in thraldom, 
while Washington and his Continentals battled for the 
freedom of America. Nor did Washington battle only 
with the actual foe in the field. He had to strive also 
with the short-sighted and sour jealousies of the differ- 
ent States, the mixed impotence and intrigue of Con- 
gress, the poverty of the people, the bankruptcy of the 
government, the lukewarm timidity of many, the open 
disaffection of not a few, and the jobbery of speculators 
who were sometimes to be found high in the ranks of 
the army itself. Moreover, he had to contend with the 
general dislike of discipline and sustained exertion 
natural to the race of shrewd, brave, hardy farmers 
whom he led,- — unused as they were to all restraint, 
and unable to fully appreciate the necessity of making 
sacrifices in the present for the sake of the future. But 
his soul rose above disaster, misfortune, and suffering; 
he had the heart of the people really with him, he was 
backed by a group of great statesmen, and he had won 
the unfaltering and devoted trust of the band of veteran 
soldiers with whom he had achieved victory, suffered 
defeat, and wrested victory from defeat for so many 
years ; and he triumphed in the end. 

On November 25, 1783, the armies of the king left 
the city they had held so long, carrying with them 
some twelve thousand Loyalists ; while on the same 
day Washington marched in with his troops and with 
the civil authorities of the State. 



142 New York. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE FEDERALIST CITY. 1783-1800. 

New York was indeed a dreary city when the king's 
troops left it alter their sojourn of seven years. The 
spaces desolated by the great fires had never been built 
up, but still remained covered with the charred, melan- 
choly ruins ; the churches had been dismantled, the houses 
rifled. Business was gone, and the channels in which it 
had run were filled up. The Americans on taking pos- 
session once more had to begin all over again. They 
set busily to work to rebuild the fallen fortunes of the 
town ; but the destruction had been so complete, and 
the difficulties in the way of getting a fair start were so 
great, that for four years very little progress was made. 
Then affairs took a turn for the better ; the city began 
to flourish as it never had flourished before, and grew in 
wealth and population at a steadily increasing pace. 

The dismantled churches were put in order ; and 
Trinity, which had been burnt down in the fire of 1776, 
was entirely rebuilt. King's College had its name 
changed to Columbia, and was again started, the first 
scholar being De Witt Clinton, a nephew of George 
Clinton, at the time governor of the State. The free 
public library — the New York Society Library — was 
revived on a very much larger scale, and a good build- 
ing erected, wherein to house the books. The new 
constitution of the independent State of New York 



The Federalist City, ms-isoo. 143 

completely did away with the religious disabilities 
enforced under the old provincial government, and de- 
clared and maintained absolute religious toleration and 
equality before the law. In consequence a Catholic 
church was soon built ; while the Methodists increased 
rapidly in numbers and influence. 

The New York Medical Society began its career in 
1788 ; and one of the most curious of New York's many 
riots occurred shortly afterward. The mob engaged in 
this riot was always known as " the doctors' mob," be- 
cause their wrath was directed against the young medi- 
cal students and their teachers. Bum ours had been rife 
for some time that the doctors rifled the graveyards to 
get subjects for dissection, which excited the populace 
greatly. One day a boy looking into the dissecting- 
room saw the medical students at work on a body, and 
immediately ran home and alarmed his father. With- 
out any more reason than this, the mob suddenly assem- 
bled, hunted the doctors out of their homes, entered 
houses and destroyed property, refused to obey the com- 
mands of the civil officers when called on to disperse, 
and finally came into collision with the State troops, 
who scattered them with a volley, killing and wounding 
several. 

An occasional turbulent outbreak of this sort, how- 
ever, could not check the city's growth. Commerce 
throve apace. The more venturesome merchants sent 
ships for the first time to the far China seas; and in a 
few years, when the gigantic warfare of the French 
Revolution convulsed all Europe, New York began to 
take its full share of the traffic which was thereby 
forced into neutral bottoms. 



144 New York. 

The achievement of liberty had not worked any rad- 
ical change in the municipal government of the city; 
and the constitution under which the State entered on 
its new life of independence was not ultra-democratic, 
although of course marking a long stride toward democ- 
racy. The suffrage was rigidly limited. There were 
two kinds of franchise : any man owning a freehold 
worth £20, or paying rent to the value of forty shillings 
could vote for the members of the Assembly ; while 
only a freeholder whose freehold was worth £100 could 
vote for senator or governor. Almost all the executive 
and legislative officers, whether of the State, the county, 
or the town, were appointed by the Council of Appoint- 
ment, which consisted of the governor and four senators. 
The large landholding families thus still retained very 
much influence. The destruction of the power of the 
great Tory families, however, had of course diminished 
the weight of the rich laud-owning class as a whole ; 
and in the country the decisive power was in the hands 
of the small freeholding farmers. 

The State was not yet governed by an absolute democ- 
racy, because as yet no one save theorists were believers 
in an absolute democracy, and even manhood suffrage 
was not advocated by many persons ; while the unen- 
franchised were not actively discontented. The framers 
of the State constitution were not mere paper-government 
visionaries ; they were shrewd, honest, practical poli- 
ticians, acquainted with men and affairs. They in- 
vented new governmental methods when necessary, but 
they did not try to build up an entirely new scheme of 
government; they simply took the old system under 
which the affairs of the colon v had been administered 



The Federalist City, ms-isoo. 145 

and altered it to suit the altered conditions of the new- 
State. This method was of course much the wisest ; but 
it was naturally attended by some disadvantages. The 
constitution-makers kept certain provisions it would 
have been well to throw away ; they failed to guard 
against certain dangers that were sure to arise under the 
changed circumstances; and on the other hand, they 
created difficulties by their endeavours to guard against 
certain other dangers which had really vanished with, 
the destruction of the old system. This was notably 
shown by their treatment of the governorship, and by 
their fear of one-man power generally. The colonial 
governor was not elected by the people, nor responsible 
to them in any way ; it was therefore to the popular 
interest to hem in his power by all lawful expedients. 
This was done by the colonial legislature, the only 
exponent and servant of the popular wish. The State 
governor, however, was elected by the people, was re- 
sponsible to them, and was as much their servant and 
representative as the legislature. Nevertheless, the dis- 
trust of the non-representative, appointed, colonial gov- 
ernor was handed down as a legacy to his elective 
and representative successor. The fact that the colo- 
nial governor was made irresponsible by the method of 
his appointment, and that a colonial legislature ap- 
pointed in the same way would have been equally 
irresponsible and objectionable, was seemingly over- 
looked, and the governorship was treated as if a single per- 
son were more dangerous than a group of persons to those 
who elect both, and can hold both equally responsible. 
Accordingly, he was hampered with the Council of 
Appointment, and in other ways. We have since grown 

10 



146 New York. 

wiser in this respect; but the curious fear still survives, 
and shows itself occasionally in odd ways, — such as 
standing up for the " rights " of a wholly useless aud 
pernicious board of aldermen. 

The government of the city was treated in the same 
way. In colonial times the freeholders elected their 
own aldermen, while the mayor and executive officers 
were appointed by the representatives of the Crown. The 
system was continued, the State governor and Council of 
Appointment being substituted for the royal governor 
and his council. The freeholders continued to elect 
their aldermen, and the constables, when constables 
were elected ; but the mayor, the sheriff, and the other 
officers were appointed by the State authorities. James 
Duane was the first mayor thus appointed. There was 
thus in one respect far less local independence, far less 
right of local self-government granted the city then 
than now. The entire patronage or appointing power 
was centralized in the State authorities. On the 
other hand the city had greater liberty of action in 
certain directions than nowadays. The aldermen 
formed a real local legislature; and the city treasurer 
was actually accustomed to issue paper money on the 
credit of the municipality. On the whole, however, 
American cities have never possessed the absolute right 
to independent life and the exercise of local sover- 
eignty that have been enjoyed by most European burghs. 
In America, both in colonial days and under the na- 
tional government, the city has been treated merely as 
a geographical section of the State, and has been granted 
certain Tights of self-government, like other sections ; 
though those rights are of a peculiar kind, because of 



The Federalist City, ms-isoo. 147 

the peculiar needs and characteristics of the grantee. 
They can be altered, amended, enlarge.!, or withdrawn 
at the pleasure of the grantor, the State legislature. 
Even the enormous growth of the urban population 
during the last half-century has not in the least altered 
the legal and political status of the city as the creature 
of the State. 

Long before the Revolutionary' War had closed, the 
old government of the confederation had demonstrated 
its almost utter impotence ; and things grew worse after 
the peace. The people at large were slow to accept the 
idea that a new and stronger government was necessary. 
The struggle they had just passed through was one for 
liberty, against power; and they did not for the moment 
realize that license and anarchy are liberty's worst ene- 
mies. Their extreme individualism and their ultra- 
independent feelings, perpetually excited and played 
upon by all the legion of demagogues, inclined them to 
look with suspicion and distrust upon the measures by 
which alone they could hope to see their country raise 
her head among the nations of the earth. The best and 
wisest men of the land saw from the first the need of 
a real and strong union; but the mass of the people 
came to this idea with the utmost reluctance. It was 
beaten into their minds by the hard logic of disaster. 
The outbreak of armed rebellion in Massachusetts and 
North Carolina, the general lawlessness, the low tone 
of commercial honour, the bankruptcy of the States and 
their loss of credit at home and abroad, the contempt 
with which the confederation was treated by European 
nations, and the jarring interests of the different com- 
monwealths themselves, wdiich threatened at any mo- 



148 New York. 

meut to break out into actual civil war, — all these 
combined with the wisdom and eloquence of the ablest 
statesmen in the land, and the vast weight of Washing- 
ton's character were needed to convince an obstinate, 
suspicious, and narrow-minded, though essentially brave, 
intelligent, and patriotic people that they must cast 
aside their prejudices and jealousies and unite to form 
a stable and powerful government. Had they not thus 
united, their triumph in the llevolutionary War would 
have been* a calamity for America instead of a bless- 
ing. Freedom without unity, freedom with anarchy, 
would have been worse than useless. The men who 
opposed the adoption of the present constitution of the 
United States committed an error to the full as great 
as that of the Tories themselves ; and they strove quite 
as hard, and fortunately quite as unsuccessfully, to 
damage their country. The adoption of the constitution 
was the completion of the work begun by the War of 
Independence. This work had two stages, each essen- 
tial ; and those who opposed it during the second stage, 
like those who opposed it in the first, however honest 
of intent, did all they could to injure America. The 
Tory and the disunionist, or non-unionist, were equally 
dangerous enemies of the national growth and well- 
being. 

It was during this period of the foundation of the 
Federal government, and during the immediately suc- 
ceeding period of the supremacy of the Federalists in 
national affairs that New York City played its greatest 
and most honourable part in the government of the na- 
tion. Never before or since has it occupied so high a 
position politically, compared to the country at large ; 



The Federalist City, ms-isoo. 149 

for during these years it was the seat of power of the 
brilliant Federalist party of New York .State. Alex- 
ander Hamilton, John Jay, and at the end of the time 
Gouverneur Morris, lived in the city, or so near it as to 
have practically the weight and influence of citizens ; 
and it was the home likewise of their arch-foe Aaron 
Burr, the prototype of the skilful, unscrupulous ward- 
politician, so conspicuous in the later periods of the 
city's development. 

Hamilton, the most brilliant American statesman 
who ever lived, possessing the loftiest and keenest in- 
tellect of his time, was of course easily the foremost 
champion in the ranks of the New York Federalists ; 
second to him came Jay, pure, strong and healthy in 
heart, body, and mind. Both of them watched with 
uneasy alarm the rapid drift toward anarchy ; and both 
put forth all their efforts to stem the tide. They were 
of course too great men to fall in with the views of 
those whose antagonism to tyranny made them averse 
from order. They had little sympathy with the violent 
prejudices produced by the war. In particular they 
abhorred the vindictive laws directed against the per- 
sons and property of Tories ; and they had the manli- 
ness to come forward as the defenders of the helpless 
and excessively unpopular Loyalists. They put a stop 
to the wrongs which were being inflicted on these men, 
and finally succeeded in having them restored to legal 
equality with other citizens, standing up with generous 
fearlessness against the clamour of the mob. 

As soon as the project for a closer union of the States 
was broached, Hamilton and Jay took it up with ardour. 
New York City followed their lead, but the State as a 



150 New York. 

whole was against them. The most popular man within 
its bounds was stout old Governor Clinton, and he led 
the opposition to the proposed union. Clinton was a 
man of great strength of character, a good soldier, and 
stanch patriot in the Revolutionary War. He was bit- 
terly obstinate and prejudiced, and a sincere friend of 
popular rights. He felt genuine distrust of any form of 
strong government. He was also doubtless influenced 
in bis opposition to the proposed change by meaner 
motives. He was the greatest man in New York ; but 
he could not hope ever to be one of the greatest in the 
nation. He was the ruler of a small sovereign State, 
the commander-in-chief of its little army, the admiral 
of its petty navy, the leader of its politicians ; and he 
did not wish to sacrifice the importance that all of this 
conferred upon him. The cold, suspicious temper of 
the small country freeholders, and the narrow jealousy 
they felt for their neighbours, gave him excellent 
material on which to work. 

Nevertheless, Hamilton wou, thanks to the loyalty 
with which New York City stood by him. By untiling 
effort and masterful oratory he persuaded the State to 
send three delegates to the Federal constitutional con- 
vention. He himself went as one, and bore a promi- 
nent part in the debates ; his two colleagues, a couple 
of anti-Federalist nobodies, early leaving him. He then 
came back to the city where he wrote and published, 
jointly with Madison and Jay, a series of letters, after- 
ward gathered into a volume called " The Federalist," — 
a book which ranks among the ablest and best which 
have ever been written on politics and government. 
These articles had a profound effect on the public 



The Federalist City. 178S-1800, 151 

mind. Finally he crowned his labours by going as a 
representative from the city to the State convention, 
and winning from a hostile body a reluctant ratification 
of the Federal constitution. 

The townsmen were quicker witted, and politically 
more far-sighted and less narrow-minded than the 
average country folk of that day. The artisans, me- 
chanics, and merchants of New York were enthusiasti- 
cally in favour of the Federal constitution, and regarded 
Hamilton as their especial champion. To assist him 
and the cause they planned a monster procession, while 
the State convention was still sitting. Almost every 
representative body in the city took part in it. A troop 
of light horse in showy uniforms led, preceded by a 
band of trumpeters and a light battery. Then came a 
personator of Columbus, on horseback, surrounded by 
woodsmen with axes, — the axe being pre-eminently the 
tool and weapon of the American pioneer. Then came 
farmers in farmers' dress, driving horses and oxen yoked 
to both plough and harrow, while a new modelled thresh- 
ing-machine followed. The Society of the Cincinnati 
came next. The trades followed ; gardeners in green 
aprons, tailors, grain-measurers, bakers, with a huge 
" Federal loaf" on a platform drawn by ten bay horses, 
brewers, and coopers, with a stage drawn by four horses, 
bearing the "Federal cask," which the workmen finished 
as the procession moved, butchers, tanners, glovers, 
furriers, carpenters, masons, bricklayers, whitesmiths, 
blacksmiths, corduainers, peruke-makers, florists, cabi- 
net-makers, ivory-turners, shipwrights, riggers, and 
representatives of scores of other trades. In every part 
of the procession fluttered banners with Hamilton's 



152 New York. 

figure and name, and the great feature of the show was 
the Federal ship " Hamilton," drawn by ten horses. It 
was a thirty-two-gun frigate in miniature, twenty-seven 
feet long, fully rigged, and manned by thirty seamen 
and marines. Thirteen guns from her deck gave the 
signal to start, and saluted at times during the proces- 
sion. The faculty and students of the University, the 
learned societies and professions, the merchants, and 
distinguished strangers brought up the rear. The pro- 
cession moved out to the Bayard House, beyond the 
city, where a feast for six thousand people was served. 

For the first year of government under the new 
constitution, New York was the Federal capital. It 
was thither that Washington journeyed to be inaugu- 
rated President with stately solemnity, April 30, 1789. 
The city had by this time fully recovered its prosperity; 
and when it became the headquarters for the ablest 
statesmen from all parts of the Union, its social life 
naturally became most attractive, and lost its provincial 
spirit. However, its term of glory as the capital was 
short, for when Congress adjourned in August, 1790, it 
was to meet at Philadelphia. 

The political history of the city during the twelve 
years of Washington's and Adams's administrations, is 
the history of a nearly balanced struggle between the 
Federalists and the anti-Federalists, who gradually 
adopted the name, first of Republicans and then of 
Democrats. As always in our political annals, individ- 
uals were constantly changing sides, often in large 
numbers ; but as a whole, party continuity was well 
preserved. The men who had favoured the adoption of 
the constitution grew into the Federal party ; the men 



The Federalist City, ms-isoo. 153 

who had opposed it, and wished to construe it as nar- 
rowly as possible, and to restrict the powers of the 
central government even to the point of impotence, 
became Jeffersonian Republicans. 

Hamilton and Jay were the heart of the Federalist 
party in the city and State. Both were typical New 
Yorkers of their time, — being of course the very highest 
examples of the type, for they were men of singularly 
noble and lofty character. Both were of mixed and 
non-English blood, Jay being of Huguenot and Hollander 
stock, and Hamilton of Scotch and French Creole. 
Hamilton, born out of New York, was in some ways a 
more characteristic New Yorker than Jay ; for New 
York, like the French Revolution, has always been pre- 
eminently a career open to talent. The distinguishing 
feature of the city has been its broad liberality ; it 
throws the doors of every career wide open to all adopted 
citizens. 

Jay lacked Hamilton's brilliant audacity and genius ; 
but he possessed an austere purity and poise of character 
which his greater companion did not. He was twice 
elected governor of the State, serving from 1795 to 1801 ; 
indeed, he was really elected to the position in 1792, 
but was cheated out of it by most gross and flagrant 
election frauds, carried on in Clinton's interest, and 
connived at by him. His popularity was only tempo- 
rarily interrupted even by the storm of silly and un- 
warranted abuse with which New York City, like the 
rest of the country, greeted the successful treaty which 
he negotiated when special envoy to England in 1794. 

Hamilton was, of course, the leader of his party. But 
his qualities, admirably though they fitted him for the 



154 New York. 

giant tasks of constructive statesmanship with which he 
successfully grappled, did not qualify him for party 
leadership. He was too impatient and dictatorial, too 
heedless of the small arts and unwearied, intelligent 
industry of the party manager. In fighting for the 
adoption of the constitution he had been heartily sup- 
ported by the great families, — the Livingstons, the Van 
Rensselaers, and his own kin by marriage, the Schuylers. 
Afterward he was made secretary of the treasury, and 
Jay chief-justice, while through his efforts Schuyler 
and Rufus King — a New York City man of New 
England origin — were made senators. Chancellor 
Robert R Livingston was not an extreme believer in the 
ideas of Hamilton. He was also jealous of him, being a 
very ambitious man, and was offended at being, as he 
conceived, slighted in the distribution of the favours of 
the national administration. Accordingly, he deserted to 
the Republicans with all his very influential family fol- 
lowing. This was the first big break in the Federalist 
ranks. 

When Washington was inaugurated President he 
found that he had a number of appointments to make in 
New York. Almost all the men he thus appointed 
were members of the party that had urged the adoption 
of the Constitution, — for Washington, though incapable 
of the bitter and unreasoning partisanship which puts 
party above the public welfare and morality, was much 
more of a party man than it has been the fashion to 
represeut him, and during the final years of his life, in 
particular, was a strong Federalist. Clinton distributed 
the much larger and more important State patronage 
chiefly among his anti-Federalist adherents. As already 



The Federalist City, nss-isou. 155 

explained, there was then no patronage at all in the 
hands of the local, that is, the county and city, authori- 
ties; for though an immense amount was given to the 
mayor, he was really a State official. 

The parties were very evenly matched in New York 
City, no less than in the State at large, during the closing 
twelve years of the century, — the period of Federalist 
supremacy in the nation. The city was the pivotal part 
of the State, and the great fighting-ground. It was 
carried alternately by the Federalists and Democrats, 
again and again. Aaron Burr, polished, adroit, unscru- 
pulous, was the most powerful of the city Democracy. 
He was elected to the United States Senate to succeed 
Schuyler, and was in turn himself succeeded by Schuyler. 
Hamilton grew to regard him with especial dislike and 
distrust, because of his soaring ambition, his cunning, 
and his lack of conscience. The Livingstons backed 
him ardently against. the Federalists, and one of their 
number was elected and re-elected to Congress from the 
city. De Witt Clinton was also forging to the front, 
and was a candidate for State office from the city on 
more than one occasion, sharing in the defeats and 
victories of his party. Jay's two successive victories, 
on the other hand, gave the Federalists the governor- 
ship of the State for six years. Under Hamilton's lead 
they won in New York City rather more often than they 
lost. In 1799 they gained a complete victory, utterly 
defeating the Democratic ticket, which was headed by 
Burr ; and the legislature thus chosen elected the Fed- 
eralist Gouverneur Morris to the United States Senate. 
The newspapers reviled their opponents with the utmost 
bitterness, and often with ferocious scurrility. The 



156 New York. 

leading Federalist editor in the city was the famous 
dictionary-maker, Noah Webster. 

Party and personal feeling was intensely bitter all. 
through these contests. Duels were frequent among 
the leaders, and riots not much less so among their 
followers. The mob turned out joyfully, on mischief 
bent, whenever there was any excuse for it ; and the 
habit of holding open-air meetings, to denounce some 
particular person or measure, gave ample opportunity 
for outbreaks. At these meetings, speakers of the for- 
the-moment unpopular party were often rather roughly 
handled, — a proceeding which nowadays would be con- 
demned by even the most heated partisans as against 
the rules of fair play. The anti-Federalists, at some of 
their public meetings, held to denounce the adoption of 
the Constitution, or to break up the gatherings of those 
who supported it, got up regular riots against their oppo- 
nents. At one of the meetings, held for the purpose of 
denouncing Jay's treaty with England, — a treaty which 
was of great benefit to the country, and the best that 
could then have been negotiated, — Hamilton was him- 
self maltreated. 

At the approach of the Presidential election of 1800, 
Burr took the lead in organizing the forces of the 
Democracy. He was himself his party's candidate for 
the Vice Presidency; and he managed the campaign 
with consummate skill. As before, the city was the 
pivotal part of the State, while the State's influence in 
the election at large proved to be decisive. The 
Democracy of the city was tending to divide into three 
factions. The Clintons were the natural leaders; but 
the Livingston family was very powerful, and was con- 



The Federalist City, ms-isoo. 157 

nected by marriage with such men as James Duane, a 
city politician of great weight, and Morgan Lewis, after- 
ward governor ; and both the Clintonians and Living- 
stons, jealous of one another, were united in distrust of 
Burr. Accordingly, the latter dexterously managed to 
get up a combination ticket containing the names of the 
most prominent members of each faction. This secured 
him against any disaffection. He then devoted himself 
to the work of organization. By his tact, address, and 
singular personal charm, he had gathered round him a 
devoted band of henchmen, mostly active and energetic 
young men. He made out complete lists of all the 
voters, and endeavoured to find out how each group 
could be reached and influenced, and he told off every 
worker to the district where he could do most good. 
He was indefatigable in getting up ward meetings also. 
Hamilton fought him desperately, and with far greater 
eloquence, and he was on the right side ; but Hamilton 
was a statesman rather than a politician. He had 
quarrelled uselessly with some of the greatest men in 
his own party ; and he could not devote his mind to 
the mastery of the petty political detail and intrigue in 
which Burr revelled. Burr won the day by a majority 
of five hundred votes. As so often since in this city, 
the statesman, the man of mark in the national arena, 
went down before the skilful ward-politician. 

Thus the great Federalist party fell from power, not 
to regain it, save in local spasms here and there. It 
was a party of many faults, — above all the one un- 
forgivable fault of distrusting the people, — but it was 
the party which founded our government, and ever most 
jealously cherished the national honour and integrity. 



158 New York. 

New York City lias never produced any other political 
leaders deserving to rank with the group of distin- 
guished Federalists who came from within, or from just 
"without, her borders. She has never since stood so high 
politically, either absolutely, or relatively to the rest of 
the country. 



Democratic Rule, isoi-mi. 159 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE BEGINNING OF DEMOCRATIC RULE. 1801-1821. 

In the electoral college, Jefferson and Burr, the Demo- 
cratic-Republican candidates for President and Vice- 
President, had a tie vote under the curious system then 
prevailing, and this left the House of Representatives to 
decide which should be given the Presidency. The 
Federalists, as a whole, from hatred to Jefferson, sup- 
ported Burr ; but Hamilton, to his honour, opposed this 
move with all his might, and from thenceforth was 
regarded by Burr with peculiar and sinister hostility. 
Jefferson was finally chosen. 

In the spring of 1801 the Democrats also elected the 
veteran George Clinton as governor, Do Witt Clinton 
being at the same time made one of the Council of 
Appointment. They then for the first time had complete 
and unchecked control of the entire governmental system 
of the nation and State, and therefore of the city. 

From that day to this the Democratic party has been 
the dominant party in New York City. Occasionally, 
in some period of violent political upheaval, or at a mo- 
ment when the ever-existing faction-fight in its own 
ranks has been more than usually bitter and exhausting, 
its opponents for the time being, whether Federalists, 
Whigs, Republicans, or members of ephemeral organ- 
izations, like that of the Native Americans, have suc- 
ceeded in carrying a given election. But their triumph 



160 New York. 

has never been more than momentary ; after a very 
short time the Democracy has invariably returned to 
power. 

The complete Democratic victory in both State and 
nation, under Clinton and Jefferson, was followed by 
the definite enthronement of the system of so-called 
"spoils" politics in New York; that is, the system 
according to which public offices are used to reward 
partisan activity became established as the theory on 
which politics were conducted, not only by the Demo- 
crats, but by Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans, down 
to the present time, — though of late years there has 
been a determined and partially successful effort to 
overthrow it. As a matter of fact, politics had had 
much to do with appointments, even before 1800 ; but 
the theory of making purely political appointments had 
not been openly avowed, and there had been a very 
real feeling against political removals. Moreover, there 
had been comparatively little pressure to make these 
removals. In national affairs the Federalists had been 
supreme since the constitution was adopted, and so had 
nobody to remove. When Washington took the Presi- 
dency, the citizens were divided on party lines accord- 
ingly as they did or did not favour the constitution ; and 
he made his appointments in much the greatest number 
of cases from among the former, although allowing his 
political opponents a certain share of the offices. Dur- 
ing his second tei'm, and during Adams's presidency, 
very few non-Federalists indeed were appointed. In 
New York State Clinton was governor from the organi- 
zation of the State government until 1795. He was 
therefore not tempted to make any removals for politi- 



Democratic Rule, isoi-isei. 161 

cal reasons. Moreover, the whole question of removals 
and appointments was in the hands of the Council of 
Appointment, which was sometimes hostile to the gov- 
ernor. During the first ten years of Clinton's governor- 
ship there was practically but one party in the State ; 
after the rise of the Federalists very few of them were 
appointed to office, Clinton dexterously managing the 
patronage in the interest of his party and personal 
friends, but always with an eye to the benefit of the 
public at large. When Jay succeeded as governor, he 
appointed mainly Federalists; but he rejected with 
indignation any proposition to make removals merely 
for political reasons. 

After 1800 all this was changed. Jefferson, as has 
been well said, enunciated the doctrine that " to the 
victors belong half the spoils ; " nor did he stop when by 
removals and resignations half of the Federalists had 
left office. In fact it is impossible to act on any such 
theory; if half of the offices are taken as spoils, the 
other half must follow suit. Most of the national ap- 
pointees in New York were speedily changed ; and the 
remainder were temporarily saved only because Jefferson 
had in his cabinet one man, Albert Gallatin, who ab- 
horred a general partisan proscription. The wielders of 
power in the State government were not so moderate. 
Stout old Governor Clinton protested against the mean- 
ness of making purely political removals ; but he was 
overruled by the Council of Appointment, which was led 
by his nephew, De Witt Clinton. The latter had 
adapted Jefferson's theory to New York conditions, and 
declared that all heads of cities, of counties, of big 
offices and the like, ought to be political adherents of 

11 



1 62 New York. 

the administration, while all minor office-holders should 
he apportioned between the parties according to their 
numbers. Of course this meant in practice that all 
Federalists were to be removed and Democrats appointed 
in their places. In other words, the victors promptly 
proceeded to make a clean sweep of all the State, and 
therefore all the local, offices. 

The city had been the stronghold of Federalism, and 
its officers were among the first to feel the axe. Richard 
Varick had made a most admirable mayor for twelve 
years. He was now summarily removed and Edward 
Livingston appointed in his place. Livingston at the 
same time was also given, by the national government, 
the position of United States District Attorney. The 
mayoralty was a much coveted prize, as the incum- 
bent not only presided over the common council and 
wielded much patronage, but was also presiding judg<i 
of a court of record with peculiar and extensive powers. 
His emoluments came in the shape of fees and perqui- 
sites, arranged on such a liberal scale as to form a very 
large salary. When Livingston left the office it was 
given to De Witt Clinton, then United States senator ; 
and he actually resigned from the Senate to take it. 
However, the Senate was not then held in as high 
regard as now. About this time another New York 
senator resigned for the purpose of accepting the city 
postmastership. 

A dozen members and connections of the Livingston 
family were appointed to important offices, the entire 
patronage of the State being divided between them and 
the Clintonians. They had formed an alliance to crush 
Burr, — receiving the hearty support of Jefferson, who 



Democratic Rule, isoi-mi. 163 

always strove to break down any possible rival in his 
party. From this time on every taction of the Demo- 
cratic party in turn, when it was in power, used the 
patronage mercilessly against its antagonists within and 
without the party, making a clean sweep of the offices ; 
and so did the Federalists, when for a brief moment, just 
before the War of 1812, they again took the reins of 
government in the State. It was of course but a short 
step from making removals for political reasons, without 
regard to the fitness of the incumbent, to making ap- 
pointments in which considerations of political expedi- 
ency outweighed considerations of propriety. The step 
was soon taken. The Council of Appointment even 
occasionally gave lucrative local offices in the city of 
New York to influential partisans of loose character 
from remote sections of the State. 

The Clintonians and Livingstons, backed by all the 
weight of the national administration, reduced Burr's 
influence in the Democratic party to a nullity, and 
finally drove him out. He was not renominated for 
Vice-President, George Clinton being put in his place. 
In the State election, about the same time, Chancellor 
Livingston's brother-in-law, Morgan Lewis, was nomi- 
nated for governor. Burr ran for the office as an Inde- 
pendent, hoping to carry not only his own faction of 
the Democracy, but also the entire Federalist vote. 
The majority of the Federalists did support him ; but a 
large number, under Hamilton's lead, refused to do so, 
and though he just carried the city, he was beaten 
overwhelmingly in the State at large. 

Burr was now a ruined man, hated by all factions 
and parties. Nevertheless, he played out the losing 



1 64 New York. 

game to the last with unmoved force and unflinching 
resolution; and he took cool and ferocious vengeance 
on his greatest and most formidable foe, Hamilton. 
The duel was then a recognized feature of society and 
politics, and had become a characteristic adjunct of the 
savage party contests in New York. One of Burr's 
followers had killed Hamilton's eldest son in a duel ; 
and another had been severely wounded by De Witt 
Clinton in a similar encounter. In 1804, after his defeat 
for the governorship, Burr forced a duel on Hamilton, 
and mortally wounded him in a meeting with pistols at 
Weehawkeii, then a favourite resort for duellists. Ham- 
iltou's death caused the utmost horror and anger. The 
whole city mourned him, even his political opponents 
forgetting all save his generous and noble qualities, and 
the renown of his brilliant statesmanship. Burr was 
thenceforth an ostracized man ; and duelling in New 
York received its death-blow. 

In 1807, when Governor Lewis's successor in the 
governorship was to be nominated, the Clintouian or 
popular wing of the Democracy turned on him, defeated 
him for the nomination, and drove the Livingston family 
from power, serving them precisely as the two factions 
together had already served the Burrites'. For a few 
years longer the Livingstons continued to have a certain 
influence in the State; and while the Federal party was 
still of some weight, one or two of the great Federalist 
families- — notably the Van Bensselaers — counted for a 
good deal in the political world. After the close of the 
War of 1812, however, the Federalists became of no 
moment, and the Livingstons, the aristocratic wing of 
the Democratic party, sank out of sight. The reign of 



Democratic Rule, isoi-iszi. 165 

the great families who for over a century had played 
so prominent a part in New York political life, was 
then at an end. They lost every shred of political 
power, and the commonwealth became what it had long 
been becoming, in fact as well as name, absolutely 
democratic. The aristocratic leaven in the loaf disap- 
peared completely. The sway of the people was absolute 
from that time on. 

After Washington, the greatest and best of the Fede- 
ralist leaders, died, and after the Jeffersonian Democrats 
came into power, the two parties in New York, as else- 
where throughout the country, began to divide on a 
very humiliating line. They fought each other largely 
on questions of foreign politics. The Federalists sup- 
ported the British in the European struggle then raging, 
and the Democrats the French. One side became 
known as the British, the other as the French faction. 
Each man with abject servility apologized for and de- 
fended the numerous outrages committed against us by 
the nation whose cause his party championed. It was 
a thoroughly unwholesome and discreditable condition 
of politics, — worse than anything we have seen in the 
country for many years past. Neither party at this 
time was truly national or truly American. To their 
honour be it said, however, many of the New York Demo- 
crats refused to go with the extreme Jefferson i an s, as 
regards the embargo and subsequent matters. Moreover 
the Federalists, in their turn, with the exception of a 
minority led by Gouverneur Morris, refused to take any 
part in the secessionist movements of their party friends 
in New England, during the War of 1812. After this 
war the Federalists gradually disappeared ; while their 



1 65 New York. 

opponents split into a perfect tangle of factions, whose 
innumerable lights and squabbles it is nearly impos- 
sible and entirely unnecessary to relate in intelligible 
form. During all this period the political bitterness 
was intense, as the scurrility of the newspapers bore 
witness. One of its most curious manifestations was 
in connection with the chartering of banks. These 
were then chartered by special acts ©f the legislature ; 
and it was almost absolutely impossible for a bank of 
which the officers and stockholders belonged to one 
party to get a charter from a legislature controlled by 
the other. Aaron Burr once accomplished the feat, 
before the Federalist overthrow in 1800, by taking 
advantage of the cry in New York for better water. He 
prepared a bill chartering a company to introduce water 
into the city, and tacked on an innocent-looking pro- 
vision allowing them to organize " for other purposes " 
as well. The charter once granted, the company went 
into no other enterprise save banking, and let the water- 
supply take care of itself. 

At the beginning of the century, New York was a 
town of sixty thousand inhabitants. The social life was 
still aristocratic. The great families yet retained their 
prestige. Indeed, the Livingstons were at the zenith of 
their power in the State, and possessed enormous influ- 
ence, socially and politically. They were very wealthy, 
and lived in much state, with crowds of liveried negro 
servants, free and slave. Their city houses were large 
and handsome, and their great country-seats dotted the 
beautiful banks of the Hudson. 

The divisions between the upper, middle, and lower 
classes were sharply marked. The old families formed 



Democratic Rule. I801-I821. 167 

a rather exclusive circle, and among them the larce 
landowners still claimed the lead, though the rich mer- 
chants, who were of similar ancestry, much outnumbered 
them, and stood practically on the same plane. But the 
days of this social and political aristocracy were num- 
bered. They lost their political power first, being 
swamped in the rising democratic tide ; and their social 
primacy — mere emptiness when thus left unsup- 
ported — followed suit a generation or so later, when 
their descendants were gradually ousted even from this 
last barren rock of refuge by those whose fathers or 
grandfathers had, out of the humblest beginnings, made 
their own huge fortunes. The fall of this class, as a 
class, was not to be regretted ; for its individual mem- 
bers did not share the general fate unless they them- 
selves deserved to fall. The descendant of any old 
family who was worth his salt, still had as fair a 
chance as any one else to make his way in the world 
of politics, of business, or of literature ; and according 
to our code and standard, the man who asks more is a 
craven. 

However, the presence of the great families undoubt- 
edly gave a pleasant flavour to the gay social life of 
New York during the early years of the century. It 
had a certain half-provincial dignity of its own. The 
gentlemen still dressed, with formal and elaborate care, 
in the costume then worn by the European upper 
clnsses, — a costume certainly much more picturesque, if 
less comfortable, than that of the present day. The 
ladies were more apt to follow the fashions of Paris 
than of London. All well-to-do persons kept their own 
heavy carriages, and often used them for journeys no 
less than for pleasure drives. The social season was at 



1 68 New York'. 

its height in the winter, when there was an uninter- 
rupted succession of dinners, balls, tea-parties, and card- 
parties. One of the great attractions was the Park 
Theatre, capable of holding twelve hundred persons, and 
always thronged when there was a good play on the 
boards. Large sleighing-parties were among the favour- 
ite pastimes, dinner being taken at some one of the half- 
dozen noted taverns a few miles without the city, while 
the drive back was made by torchlight if there was no 
moon. Marriages were scenes of great festivity. In 
summer the fashionable promenade was the Battery 
Park, with its rows and clumps of shade-trees, and 
broad walk by the water ; and on still nights there was 
music played in boats on the water. The "gardens" — 
such as Columbia Gardens, and Mt. Vernon Gardens 1 
on Broadway — were also meeting-places in hot weather. 
They were enclosed pieces of open ground, covered with 
trees, from which coloured lanterns hung in festoons. 
There were fountains in the middle, and little tables at 
which ice-cream was served. Round the edges were 
boxes and stalls, sometimes in tiers ; and there was 
usually a fine orchestra. When the hot months ap- 
proached, the custom was to go to some fashionable 
watering-place, such as Ballston Springs, where the 
gaiety went on unchecked. 

The houses of the well-to-do were generally of brick, 
and those of the poorer people of wood. There were 
thirty-odd churches; and the two principal streets or 
roads were Broadway and the Bowery. After nightfall 
the streets were lighted with oil lamps ; each householder 
was obliged to keep the part of the thoroughfare in 
i This was at Leonard Street, then "a little out of town." 



Democratic Rule. lsui-is2i. 169 

front of his own house clean swept. There were large 
markets for vegetables, fruits, and meat, brought in by 
the neighbouring farmers, and for fish and game, — Long 
Island furnishing abundance of venison, and of prairie 
fowl, or, as they were then called, heath hens. Hickory 
wood was generally used for fuel ; the big chimneys 
being cleaned by negro sweep boys. Milk was carried 
from house to house in great cans, by men with 
wooden yokes across their shoulders. The well-water 
was very bad ; and pure spring-water from without the 
city was hawked about the streets in carts, and sold by 
the gallon. y 

The sanitary condition of the city was very bad. A 
considerable foreign immigration had begun, — though a 
mere trickle compared to what has come in since, — 
and these immigrants, especially the Irish, lived in 
cellars and miserable hovels. Every few years the 
city was scourged by a pestilence of yellow fever. 
Then every citizen who could, left town ; and among 
those who remained, the death rate ran up far into 
the hundreds. 

As the city grew, the class of poor who were unable, 
at least in times of stress, to support themselves, grew 
likewise ; and organized charities were started in the 
effort to cope with the evil. Orphan asylums and 
hospitals were built. Societies for visiting the poor in 
their homes were started, and did active work, — and 
by their very existence showed how much New York 
already differed from the typical American country 
district or village, where there were few so poor as to 
need such relief, and hardly any who would not have 
resented it as an insult. As early as 1798 one society 



i7o New Yoa'a: 

reported that it had supported through a hard winter 
succeeding a summer of unusual sickness, over three 
hundred widows and orphans who would otherwise have, 
had to lake refuge in the almshouse. It goes without 
saying, however, that this acute poverty was always 
local and temporary; there was then no opportunity for 
the pauperism and misery of overcrowded tenement- 
house districts. 

The first savings-hank was established in 1810. 
The foundations of our free-school system were Laid 
in 1805. The Dutch had supported schools at the 
public expense during their time of supremacy; but 
after their government was overturned, the schooling 
hud been left to private effort. Every church had its 
own school, learning being still the special property of 
the clergy; and there were plenty of private schools 
and charity free sehools in addition. Public-spirited 
citizens, however, felt that in a popular government the 
first duty of the State was to see that the children of its 
citizens were trained as they should be. Accordingly, a 
number of prominent citizens organized themselves into 
a society to establish a free school, obtained a charter 
from the legislature, and opened their school in 1806. 
They expressly declared that their aim was only to 
provide for the education of such poor children as were 
not, provided for by any religious society; for at that 
time the whole; theory of education was that it should 
be religious, and almost all schools were sectarian. The 
live schools increased in number under the care of the 
society, and finally grew to he called public schools; 

and by growth and change the system was gradually 
transformed, until one of the cardinal points of public 



Democratic Rule, isoi-isn. 171 

policy in New York, as elsewhere in the northern United 
Stales, became the establishment of free, non-sectarian 
public schools, supported and managed by the State, 
and attended by the great, mass of the children who go 
to school at all. The sectarian schools, all-important 
before the rise of the public-school system, have now 
been thrust into an entirely secondary position. Perhaps 
the best Work of the public school has been in the 
direction of Americanizing immigrants, or rather the 
children of immigrants; and it wonld be almost impos- 
sible to over-estimate the good it has accomplished in 
this direction. 

Many scientific and literary societies were founded in 
New York early in the present century. The city began 
to have room for an occasional man of letters or science, 
in addition to the multitude of lawyers and clergymen, 
— the lawyer, in particular, occupying the front rank in 
Revolutionary and post- Revolutionary days. A queer, 
versatile scholar and student of science, who also dab- 
bled in politics and philanthropy, Dr. Samuel Latham 
Mitchell, was one of New York's most prominent and 
most eccentric characters at this time. Charles Brock- 
den Brown published one or two mystical novels which 
in their day had a certain vogue, even across the 
Atlantic, but are now only remembered as being the 
earliest American ventures of the kind ; aud in 1807 
Washington Irving may Ik; said to have first broken 
ground in the American field of true literature with his 
"Knickerbocker's History of New York." 

This same year of 1807 was rendered noteworthy by 
the beginning of steam navigation. Robert Fulton, 
after many failures, at last invented a model that would 



172 New York. 

work, and took his steamboat, the Clermont, on a trial 
trip from New York to Albany and back. Thus he 
began the era of travel by steam, to which, more than 
to any other one of the many marvellous discoveries 
and inventions of the age, we owe the mighty and 
far-reaching economic and social changes which this 
century has witnessed. Fulton's claim to the discovery 
was disputed by a score of men, — among them his 
fellow-citizens, John Fitch, Nicholas Eoosevelt, and 
John Stevens, all of whom had built steamboats which 
had just not succeeded. But the fact remained that he 
was the first one to apply the principle successfully ; 
and to him the credit belongs. Very soon there were a 
number of American steamboats in existence. In 1811 
Nicholas Eoosevelt introduced them on the Mississippi, 
while Stevens took his to the Delaware. During the 
War of 1812 Fulton planned and built at New York, 
under the direction of Congress, a great steam frigate, 
with cannon-proof sides and heavy guns ; she worked 
well, but peace was declared just before she was ready, 
otherwise she would probably have anticipated the feats 
of the Merrimac by half a century. 

It was a calamity to the city that this steam frigate 
was not ready earlier ; for New York was blockaded 
closely throughout this war, which was far from popular 
with her merchants. Yet they ought to have seen that 
the war was most necessary to their commercial well- 
being, no less than to their honour and national self- 
respect ; for the frigates of Britain had for a dozen years 
of nominal peace kept the city under a more or less 
severe blockade, in the exercise of the odious right of 
search. They kept a strict watch over all outgoing and 



Democratic Rule, isoi-isn. 173 

incoming ships, hovering off the coast like hawks, and 
cruising in the lower bay, firing on coasters and mer- 
chantmen to bring them to. Once they even killed one 
of the crew of a coaster in this manner, and the outrage 
went unavenged. When war at last came, many of the 
ardent young men of the city, who had chafed under the 
insults to which they had been exposed, went eagerly 
into the business of privateering, which combined both 
profit and revenge. New York sent scores of privateers 
to sea to prey on the enemy's commerce ; and formidable 
craft they were, especially toward the end of the war, 
when the typical privateer was a large brig or schooner 
of wonderful speed and beauty, well armed and heavily 
manned. The lucky cruiser, when many prizes were 
taken, brought wealth to owner, captain, and crew ; and 
some of the most desperate sea-struggles of the kind on 
record took place between New York privateers of this 
clay and boat expeditions, sent to cut them out by 
hostile frigates or squadrons, — the most famous in- 
stance being the really remarkable fight of the brig 
"General Armstrong" at Fayal. 

With the close of the war, the beginning of immigra- 
tion from Europe on a vast scale, and the adoption of a 
more radically democratic State constitution, the history 
of old New York may be said to have come to an end, 
and that of the modern city, with its totally different 
conditions, to have begun. The town has never, before 
or since, had a population so nearly homogeneous as just 
after this second war with Great Britain ; the English 
blood has never been so nearly dominant as at that 
time, nor the English speech so nearly the sole speech 
in common use. The Dutch language had died out, and 



174 New York. 

the Dutch themselves had become completely assimi- 
lated. With the Huguenot French this was even more 
completely the case. 1 German was only spoken by an 
insignificant and dwindling remnant. Of the Irish 
immigrants, most had become absorbed in the popula- 
tion ; the remainder was too small to be of any impor- 
tance. The negroes no longer formed a noteworthy 
element in the population, and gradual emancipation, 
begun in 1799, became complete by 1827. For thirty- 
five years after the devolution the great immigration 
was from New England, and the consequent influx of 
nearly pure English blood was enormous. The old 
New Yorkers regarded this "New England invasion," as 
they called it, with jealous hostility ; but this feeling 
was a mere sentiment, for the newcomers speedily 
became almost indistinguishable from the old residents. 
Even in religious matters the people were more in 
unison than ever before or since. The bitter jealousies 
and antagonisms between the different Protestant sects, 
so characteristic of colonial times, had greatly softened ; 
and Roman Catholicism was not as yet of importance. 
There was still no widespread and grinding poverty, 
and there were no colossal fortunes. The conditions of 
civic or municipal life then were in no way akin to 
what they are now, and none of the tremendous prob- 
lems with which we must now grapple had at that 
time arisen. 

1 However one Huguenot church has always kept up its language, 
mainly for the use of foreigners. 



Growth of the City, isu-isqo. iy\ 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE GROWTH OF THE COMMERCIAL AND DEMOCRATIC 
CITY. 1821-1SU0. 

In 1820 New York City contained about a hundred and 
twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The demand for a 
more democratic State constitution found its realization 
in the convention of 1822. The constitutional amend- 
ments proposed and adopted at this time, and in the 
following years, were in the direction of increasing the 
direct influence of the people by widening the suffrage, 
and of decentralizing power and increasing the amount 
of local self-government. The Council of Appointment 
was abolished. In 1822 the suffrage was given to all 
tax-payers; and in 1826 all property qualifications were 
abolished, except in the case of negroes, who were still 
required to be freeholders. It is noteworthy that the 
most bitter opponents of negro suffrage were the very 
men who most zealously championed universal suffrage 
for all white citizens, no matter how poor and ignorant; 
while on the other hand, the old Federalists and Con- 
servatives who strenuously opposed universal suffrage, 
and prophesied that it would bring dire disaster on the 
State, favoured granting equal rights to the blacks. It 
is small wonder that the free blacks should generally 
have voted with the Federalists, — precisely as at a 
later date in the southern States, as for instance North 
Carolina, such of the free blacks as even in the days of 



170 New York. 

slavery were allowed to vote, always followed the lead 
of the local gentry. The white mob which detested the 
white " aristocrats," and believed in the most absolute 
democracy among the whites themselves, clamoured 
loudly against the blacks, and favoured the establish- 
ment of aristocratic and inferior castes separated by the 
colour line. The conduct of the popular party toward 
the negroes was the reverse of creditable. 

Under the constitution of 1822 the mayor of New 
York was chosen by the municipal council; after 1834 
he was elected by the citizens. The constitution of 
1846, the high-water mark of democracy, which made 
some very good and a few very bad changes in the State 
government, affected the municipal system compara- 
tively little, with the important exception that it pro- 
vided for the election not only of local but of judicial 
officers. The election of judges by universal suffrage 
in this great city, even though it has worked much 
better than was expected, has nevertheless now and 
then worked badly. Still the long terms and high 
salaries, and above all the general popular appreciation 
of the high honour and dignity conferred by the office, 
have hitherto given us on the whole a very good bench. 

The distinguishing features of the life of the city be- 
tween 1820 and 1860 were its steady and rapid growth 
in population, the introduction of an absolutely demo- 
cratic system of government, the immense immigration 
from abroad, completely changing the ethnic character 
of the population, the wonderful growth of the Roman 
Catholic Church, and the great material prosperity, to- 
gether with the vast fortunes made by many of the busi- 
ness men, usually of obscure and humble ancestry. 



Growth of the City. issi-is6o. 177 

The opening of the Erie Canal gave an extraordinary 
impetus to the development of the city. The canal had 
been planned, and reports concerning it drawn up, at 
different times by various New York citizens, notably 
by Gouverneur Morris; but the work was actually 
done, in spite of violent opposition, by De Witt Clinton. 
Clinton was, more than any other man, responsible for 
the introduction of the degrading system of spoils poli- 
tics into the State ; most of his political work was 
mere faction fighting for his own advancement; and he 
was too jealous of all competitors, and at the same time 
not a great enough man, ever to become an important 
figure in the national arena. But he was sincerely 
proud of his city and State, and very much interested 
in all philanthropic, scientific, and industrial movements 
to promote their honour and material welfare. He fore- 
saw the immense benefits that would be brought about 
by the canal, and the practicability of constructing it ; 
and by indomitable resolution and effort he at last com- 
mitted the State to the policy he wished. In 1817 the 
work was started, and in 1825 it was completed, and 
the canal opened. 

During the same period regular lines of steamboats 
were established on both the Hudson and the Sound ; 
and the steamboat service soon became of great com- 
mercial importance. It was a couple of decades later 
before the railroads became factors in the city's develop- 
ment, but they soon completely distanced the steam- 
boats, and finally even the canal itself; and as line after 
line multiplied, they became the great inland feeders of 
New York's commerce. The electric telegraph likewise 
was introduced before the middle of the century ; and, 

12 



178 New York. 

as with the steamboat, its father, the man who first put 
it into practical operation, was a New Yorker, Samuel 
Morse, — though there were scores of men who bad per- 
ceived its possibilities, and vainly striven to translate 
them into actual usefulness. Steam transportation and 
electricity have been the two prime factors in the great 
commercial and industrial revolutions of this century; 
and New York has produced the two men who deserve 
the most credit for their introduction. Fulton and 
Morse stand as typical of the inventive, mechanical, 
and commercial genius of the city at the mouth of the 
Hudson. 

Few commercial capitals have ever grown with more 
marvellous rapidity than New York. The great mer- 
chants and men of affairs who have built up her material 
prosperity, have not merely enriched themselves and 
their city; they have also played" no inconsiderable part 
in that rapid opening up of the American continent 
during the present century, which has been rendered 
possible by the eagerness and far-reaching business am- 
bition of commercial adventurers, wielding the wonder- 
ful tools forged by the science of our day. The 
merchant, the "railroad king," the capitalist who works 
or gambles for colossal stakes, bending to his purpose 
an intellect in its way as shrewd and virile as that of 
any statesman or warrior, — all these, and their com- 
peers, are and have been among the most striking and 
important, although far from the noblest, figures of 
nineteenth-century America. 

Two New Yorkers of great note in this way may be 
instanced as representatives of their class, — John Jacob 
Astor and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Astor was originally 



Growth ot the City, mi-isco. 179 

a German pedler, who came to the city immediately 
after the close of the Revolution. He went into the 
retail fur-trade, and by energy, thrift, and far-sighted- 
ness, soon pushed his way up so as to be able to 
command a large amount of capital; and he forthwith 
embarked on ventures more extensive in scale. The 
fur-trade was then in the North almost what the trade 
in gold and silver had been in the South. Vast fortunes 
were made in it, and the career of the fur-trader was 
checkered by romantic successes and hazardous vicissi- 
tudes. Astor made money with great rapidity, and 
entered on a course of rivalry with the huge fur compa- 
nies of Canada. Finally, in 1809, he organized the 
American Fur Company, under the auspices of the 
State of New York, with no less a purpose than the es- 
tablishment of a settlement of trappers and fur-traders 
at the mouth of the Columbia. He sent his parties out 
both by sea and overland, established his posts, and 
drove a thriving trade; and doubtless he would have 
anticipated by a generation the permanent settlement 
of Oregon, if the war had not broken out, and his 
colony been destroyed by the British. The most sub- 
stantial portion of his fortune was made out of success- 
ful ventures in New York City real estate ; and at his 
death he was one of the five richest men in the world. 
His greatest service to the city was founding the Astor 
Library. 

Vanderbilt was a Staten Island boy, whose parents 
were very poor, and who therefore had to work for his 
living at an early age. Before the War of 1812, when a 
lad in his teens, he had been himself sailing a sloop as 
a ferry-boat, between Staten Island and New York, and 



i So New York. 

soon Lad saved enough money to start a small line of 
them. After the war he saw the possibilities of the 
steamboat, and began to run one as captain, owning 
a share in it as well. He shortly saved enough to be- 
come his own capitalist, and removed to Now York in 
1829. He organized steam lines on the Hudson and 
Sound, making money hand over hand ; and in 1840 — 
the period of the California gold fever — he turned his 
attention to ocean steamships, and for several years 
carried on a famous contest with the Pacific Mail Steam- 
ship Company, for the traffic across the Isthmus to 
California. He was drawn into antagonism with the 
filibuster Walker, because of his connection with the 
Central American States, and became one of the forces 
which compassed that gray-eyed adventurer's downfall. 
Then he took to building and managing railways, and 
speculating in them, and by the end of his days had 
amassed a colossal fortune. The history of the Wall 
Street speculations in which he took part, forms much 
the least attractive portion of the record of his life. 

Astor and Yanderbilt were foremost and typical 
representatives of the commercial Xew York of their 
day, exactly as Hamilton and Jay were of the Revolu- 
tionary and post-Revolutionary city. Neither was of 
English blood; Astor was a German, and Yanderbilt a 
descendant of the old Dutch settlers. Both were of 
obscure parentage, and both hewed their way up from 
the ranks by sheer force of intellect and will-power. 
Of course, neither deserves for a moment to be classed 
on the city's roll of honour with men like Hamilton and 
-lay, or like C toper and Irving. 

Before the days of steamship, railroad, and tele- 



Growth of the City, issi-iwo. 181 

graph, were the days of the fast "clippers," whose white 
wings sped over the ocean up to the time of the Civil 
War. The New York clippers, like those of Baltimore, 
were famous for their speed, size, aud beaut}'. Their 
builders exhausted every expedient to bring them to 
perfection ; and for many years after steamers were built 
they maintained a nearly equal fight against these 
formidable rivals. Crack vessels among them repeat- 
edly made the voyage to England in a fortnight. It is 
a curious fact that the United States, which only rose 
to power at the very end of the period of sailing-vessels, 
and which has not been able to hold her own among 
those nations whose sons go down to the sea in ships, 
should nevertheless, during the first half of the present 
century, have brought the art of building, handling — 
and when necessary, fighting — these .same old-time 
sailing-ships, in all their varieties of man-of-war, pri- 
vateer, merchantman, and whaler, to the highest point 
ever attained. The frigates and privateers were per- 
fected during the War of 1812; the merchant clippers 
were immensely improved after that date. The older 
vessels were slow, tubby craft ; and they were speedily 
superseded by the lines of swift packet-ships, — such 
as the "Blackball," "Red Star," and "Swallow Tail," 
— established one after the other by enterprising and 
venturesome New York merchants. . The packet-ships 
sailed for European ports. Before the middle of the 
century, lines of clippers were established to trade, and 
also to carry passengers to California and the China 
seas. In size they sometimes went up to two thousand 
tons , and compared to European merchant vessels, their 
speed and safety were such that they commanded from 



1 82 New York. 

shippers half as much again in payment for the freight- 
age on cargoes of teas and other Eastern goods. 

The large importers, and their captains as well, made 
money rapidly by these ships ; yet now, from divers 
causes, the carrying-trade has slipped through their 
fingers. But the city's growth has not been checked by 
this loss. The commerce-bringing fleets of other na- 
tions throng its harbour, while its merchants retain 
their former energy, and command their former success 
in other lines ; and the steady and rapid growth of fac- 
tories of many kinds has changed the city into a great 
manufacturing centre. There is no danger of any loss 
of commercial prosperity, nor of any falling off in the 
amount of wealth as a whole, nor of any diminution in 
the ranks of the men who range from well-to-do to very 
rich. The clanger arises from the increase of grinding 
poverty among vast masses of the population in certain 
quarters, and from the real or seeming increase in the 
inequality of conditions between the very rich and the 
very poor; in other words, as colossal fortunes grow up 
on the one hand, there grows up on the other a large 
tenement-house population, partly composed of wage- 
earners who never save anything, and partly of those 
who never earn quite enough to give their families even 
the necessaries of life. 

This ominous increase in the numbers of the class of 
the hopelessly poor is one among the injuries which 
have to a greater or less degree offset the benefits accru- 
ing to the country during the present century, because 
of the unrestricted European immigration. There was 
considerable immigration from abroad even before the 
War of 1812 ; but it did not become of great moment 



Growth of the City, issi-isgo. 183 

until after the close of the contest. The volume then 
swelled very rapidly. In 1818 and 1819 over twenty 
thousand immigrants arrived in New York, and were 
reported at the mayor's office. Most of them were very 
poor and ignorant, and at first ill able to cope with 
their new surroundings. They housed in sheds, cellars, 
and rookeries of all kinds, and in winter time were 
reduced to desperate straits for food, thousands being 
supported for short periods by the charity of private 
citizens and of organized relief associations. They did 
not go out to the frontier, and like most of the immi- 
grants of the present century preferred to huddle in the 
large cities rather than to go into the country. Year by 
year the mass of immigration increased, though with 
occasional and purely temporary fluctuations. By 1830 
it had already become so great as to dwaif all move- 
ments of the kind which the world had hitherto seen ; 
and after the potato famine in Ireland and the revolu- 
tions of 1848 in continental . Europe, fugitives from 
hunger or political oppression came over by hundreds 
of thousands. A greater proportion of these immigrants, 
relatively to the population, made their homes in New 
York than in any other part of the country. The large 
majority of them were of course from the lower or 
lower-middle classes. 

The immigration worked a complete ethnic overturn 
in the character of the population, — an overturn of 
which there had been several similar instances alreadj'- 
in the city's history. The immigrants and their children 
soon grew to outnumber the descendants of the old pre- 
Eevolutionary inhabitants, and the process was hastened 
by the fact that very many of the latter, probably far 



1 84 New York. 

more than half, themselves drifted westward, with the 
restless love of change so characteristic of their nation. 

There were many English, Scotch, and Welsh, and a 
few Scandinavians among the immigrants, and these 
speedily amalgamated with, and became indistinguish- 
able from, the natives. But by far the largest number — 
probably more than five sixths of those who settled in 
New York City during the half-century before the close 
of the Civil War — were Irish and Germans, the for- 
mer beiDg at this time much in the lead. 

The Germans had formed an important element of 
the city's population ever since the days of Leisler, who 
was himself a German, and, with the exception of Stuy- 
vesant, the most important figure in the history of the 
colonial town. They were probably, in point of num- 
bers and importance, at no time lower than the fourth 
in rank among the nationalities wliich were being fused 
together to make New York citizens. By the beginning 
of the present century the descendants of the old Ger- 
man immigrants had become completely Americanized. 
The new swarms of Germans who came hither, re- 
vived the use of the German tongue ; and as they set- 
tled in large bodies, — often forming the entire popula- 
tion of certain districts, — they clung pertinaciously to 
their own customs, kept to their own churches, and pub- 
lished their own newspapers. Nevertheless, the public- 
school system and the all-pervading energy of American 
life proved too severe solvents to be resisted even by 
the German tenacity. Some remained un-American- 
ized in a sodden, useless lump; but after a generation 
or two this ceased to be the case with the majority. 
The children of the first generation were half, and the 



Growth of the City, mi-mo. 185 

grandchildren in most cases wholly, Americanized, — to 
their own inestimable advantage. As long as they 
remained mere foreigners, speaking an alien tongue, 
they of course occupied a lower grade in the body politic 
and social than that to which their good qualities enti- 
tled them. As they became Americanized in speech 
and customs, they moved up to the same level with the 
native born. Perhaps two thirds were nominally Protes- 
tants, and these had no religious prejudices to overcome 
or be hampered by. They were thrifty, hardworking, 
and on the whole law-abiding, and they not only rose 
r.ipidly in the social scale, but as soon as they learned 
to speak our language by preference, as their native 
tongue, they became indistinguishable from the other 
Americans with whom they mixed. They furnished 
leading men to all trades and professions, and many 
founded families of high social and political distinction. 
They rendered great service to the city by their efforts 
to cultivate a popular taste for music and for harmless 
public pleasures. Only the fact that the Lutheran 
clergy clung to the German language, prevented their 
church from becoming the most important of the Prot- 
estant churches. 

The Catholic or Celtic Irish formed, in point of num- 
bers, the most important class among- the new immi- 
grants. Those of their race who had come here in 
colonial days were for the most part only imported 
bond-servants and criminals. Unlike the Germans, 
they had never formed an element of appreciable weight 
in the community until after the devolution. Soon 
after the opening of the present century they became 
the most numerous of the immigrants and began to 



1 86 New York, 

form a class of New Yorkers whose importance steadily- 
increased. They displayed little of the German frugality 
and aptitude for business, and hence remained to a far 
larger extent mere labourers, — comparatively few rising, 
at least for the first generation or two, to non-political 
positions pf importance , and they furnished much more 
than their share to the city's turbulent and lawless ele- 
ments, for in their new surroundings they were easily 
misled by both native and foreign-born demagogues and 
agitators. On the other hand, they have invariably 
proved admirable soldiers when the city has sent out 
her quota of troops in time of war ; they have taken little 
part in anarchical and socialistic movements, and — 
though this is a quality of a more doubtful kind — they 
have mastered the intricacies of local politics with aston- 
ishing ease. The improvement in their material condi- 
tion became very marked after -three or four decades. 
Moreover, their less fortunate qualities were such as 
inevitably attended the peculiar conditions of their life 
in the old country; and these gradually tended to dis- 
appear as the successive generations grew up on Amer- 
ican soil. The fact that they already spoke English 
gave them an immense advantage, compared to the 
Germans, in that they were able from the outset to 
mingle freely in American life ; but the difference of 
religion tended to keep at least the first two generations 
apart from the citizens of old American stock. The 
Irish, like the Germans, came over in such numbers 
that they were able to introduce their own separate 
social life ; but in both cases the ambitious and ener- 
getic among the descendants of the immigrants soon 
grew to realize that they must become thorough-going 



Growth of the City. is2i-isgu. 187 

Americans in order to win the great prizes of American 
life, while every family thut acquired wealth and 
culture desired nothing so much as to get a foothold 
in the upper circles of the American portion of the 
community. 

By the outbreak of the Civil War the flood of immi- 
gration had swamped the older "native American" 
stock, as far as numbers went. The mixed blood of 
New York had been mixed still further. It is curious 
to trace the successive additions of race elements to the 
population of the city. At its founding the Dutch 
were dominant, but with a considerable Walloon ele- 
ment, which was soon absorbed by the Hollanders, 
while there was a larger element of French Huguenots, 
who kept coming in, and were absorbed more slowly. 
There were also many English, and a few Germans. 
After the final English conquest there was a fair amount 
of immigration from England and Scotland ; the Hugue- 
nots also continued to come in for a little while, and 
there was a large German and a considerable Scotch- 
Irish immigration. At the end of the Revolution all 
of these peoples had grown to use the English tongue, 
and were fast being welded together ; but the great 
majority of the citizens were non-English by blood. 
There then began a great inrush of New Englanders ; 
and for the first time the citizens of English blood 
grew to outnumber those of any other strain, — all 
however being soon fused together, and becoming purely 
American. The immense immigration between 1820 
and 1860 changed this. ~By the latter date the men of 
Irish birth and blood had become more numerous than 
any others ; the Germans, at some distance off, next ; 



1 38 New York. 

while the native Americans, who still led and con- 
trolled the others, were a close third. Of course, how- 
ever, the older races of the city made the mould into 
which the newer were poured. The task is sometimes 
slow and difficult, but in the end the German or 
Irishman is always Americanized; and his influence 
upon the country of his adoption, although consider- 
able, is as nothing compared to the influence of the 
country upon him. 

The wonderful growth of the Catholic Church was of 
course due to the immigration, especially of the Irish. 
In colonial times Roman Catholicism had not been tol- 
erated. When complete religious freedom was estab- 
lished, with the organization of the new government, 
the Catholics began to come in, and soon after the Invo- 
lution they built a church ; but its congregation led a 
fitful life for the first thirty years. There were years of 
prosperity, when a convent, a school, etc., were estab- 
lished; and years of adversity, when they were aban- 
doned. The congregation was, of course, composed 
mainly of immigrants, chiefly Irish, even thus early; 
but there were enough Germans and French to make it 
necessary to hold services also in those languages. But 
on the whole the Church at this time languished, and 
religious instruction and supervision were provided for 
but a small portion of the Catholic immigrants. Ac- 
cordingly, they and their children became to a very 
large extent Protestant. After the close of the War of 
1812, matters were radically changed. New York be- 
came the permanent seat of a bishopric, a multitude of 
priests came in, churches were built, and the whole or- 
ganization sprang into vigorous life. The immense Irish 



Growth of the City, issi-imo. 1S9 

immigration gave the Church the stamp it yet retains, 
and settled that its language should be English, thus 
turning it into a potent force for Americanizing the 
Catholic immigrants from continental Europe. As early 
as 1826 the New York Catholics murmured against hav- 
ing a French bishop put over them ; though by that time 
it had been found necessary to establish separate German 
churches, as the German immigration had also begun. 
So enormous had been the inrush during the preceding 
dozen years, that at this date the Catholics already 
formed in the neighbourhood of a fifth of the city's 
population. The Protestant sects became seriously 
alarmed at this portentous, growth of the Church of 
Borne, and for the thirty years preceding the Civil War 
there was fierce religious and political agitation against 
it, the feeling growing so bitter that there were furious 
riots, accompanied with much bloodshed, between Cath- 
olic and Protestant mobs in the great cities, including 
New York. Nevertheless, the Church went on steadily 
growing ; and much, though by no means all, of the 
bitterness gradually wore away. Catholicism gained in 
numbers by converts from among the native Americans, 
often of high social standing; though this gain was 
probably much more than offset by the loss of Catholic 
immigrants who drifted into Protestantism. The Irish 
have formed the main-stay of the Church in America; 
and this, and the readiness with which on the whole it 
has adapted itself to American conditions, has deter- 
mined its development. The Catholic Church in Ire- 
land, unlike ihe Catholic Church in most portions of 
continental Europe, has been the Church of popular 
feeling; and American Catholicism also gradually grew 



190 New York. 

to identify itself with all movements in the interests of 
the masses of the people, while it was likewise affected 
by the American theories of complete religious tolera- 
tion, and separation of Church from State. In other 
words, it tended to become Americanized. It was at 
first, outside of Baltimore, and the French, Spanish, and 
Indian missious, a church of poor immigrants, chiefly 
labourers. Many of the descendants of these immi- 
grants acquired wealth, or rose to distinction in the 
community, and the different nationalities began to fuse 
together, and to assimilate themselves in speech and 
customs to the old American stock. In consequence, 
the Church gradually tended to grow into one of the 
regular American churches, even though still all-power- 
ful among the immigrants ; and it began to possess its 
proper share of men of high social and intellectual 
position. 

When, in the '20's, the immigration began to attain 
formidable dimensions, it excited much uneasiness in 
the minds of many of the native citizens, who disliked 
and looked down on the foreigners. Much of this feel- 
ing was wholly unjustifiable, while much of it was war- 
ranted by the fact that the new-comers contributed far 
more than their share to the vice, crime, misery, and 
pauperism of the community. They were popularly 
held responsible for various epidemics of disease, — uota- 
bly a terrible visitation of cholera in 1832. 

New York having been peopled by relays of immi- 
grants of different nationality, each relay in turn, as it 
became Americanized, looked down upon the next, as 
has already been said. So it is at the present day. 
The grandchildren of the Germans and Irish, to whom 



Growth of the City. is2l-isgo. 191 

such strenuous objection was made sixty years ago, now 
in turn protest against the shoals of latter-day Scla- 
vonic and Italian incomers. Race and religious antipa- 
thy have caused not a few riots during the present 
century, in New York ; and this was especially the case 
during the period covered by the forty years preceding 
the Civil War. 

However, riots of various kinds were common all 
through this period ; for the city mob was far more dis- 
orderly and less under control than at present. Nor 
were the foreigners by any means the only ones to be 
found in its ranks, for it contained a large and very 
dangerous element of native American roughs. One 
specially frequent form of riot was connected with the 
theatres. The mob was very patriotic and boisterously 
anti-British; and on the other hand many English 
actors who came to America to make money were un- 
wise enough to openly express their contempt for the 
people from whom they were to make it. Eival theat- 
rical managers would carefully circulate any such re- 
marks, and the mob would then swarm down to the 
theatre, fill it in a dense mass, and pelt the unfortunate 
offender off the boards ns soon as he appeared. The 
misused actor was not always a foreigner ; for a like 
treatment was occasionally awarded to any American 
against whom the populace bore a grudge. Certain of 
the newspapers — not a few of which were edited by 
genuine Jefferson Bricks — were always ready to take a 
hand in hounding down any actor whom they had cause 
to dislike. Some of these outbreaks were very serious; 
and they culminated in 1S49 in the " Astor Place," or 
"Opera-house " riot. On this occasion the mob tried to 



i .9 2 New York. 

gut the theatre where an obnoxious English actor was 
playing, but were held in check by the police. They 
then gathered by thousands in the streets, and were 
finally fired into by the troops, and dispersed with a 
loss of twenty killed, — a most salutary and excellent 
lesson. 

Other riots were, due to more tangible troubles. The 
enormous immigration had created a huge class of un- 
fortunates who could with difficulty earn their daily 
bread, and any period of sudden and severe distress 
threw them into a starving condition. There were one 
or two great fires which were really appalling calami- 
ties to the city; and the terrible panic of 1836-37 pro- 
duced the most widespread want and suffering. Flour 
went up to fifteen dollars a barrel. The poor were 
cast into abject misery, and were inflamed by dema- 
gogues, who raised the cry of " the poor against the 
rich," and denounced in especial the flour and grain 
dealers. The " Bread Riots " of January, 1837, were 
the result. A large mob assembled in response to pla- 
cards headed " Bread ! Meat ! Rent ! Fuel ! their prices 
must come down!" and assailed and sacked some of 
the stores and warehouses, strewing the streets with 
Hour and wheat. It was toward nightfall before the 
police could restore order. There were also savage 
labour riots, generally caused when the trades-unions 
ordered a strike, and strove to prevent other workmen 
from taking the places of the strikers. In all of these 
cases the masses of the rioters were foreign born. 

There were also riots against the Abolitionists ; their 
meetings were broken up and their leaders sometimes 
maltreated. Moreover there were bloody encounters 



Growth of the City. 1821-1S60. 193 

between native American and foreign — usually Irish 
— mobs. Finally there were frequent riots about elec- 
tion time, at the great open-air meetings and proces- 
sions, between the adherents of the rival parties. 

Politically, the steady movement toward making the 
government absolutely democratic was checked by curi- 
ous side-lights. The Whig party was the regular, and 
at times the successful, opponent of the Democracy 
throughout the middle part of this period. The Demo- 
cratic party contained, as always, the bulk of the foreign 
and Catholic voters ; its strength lay in the poor wards. 
Hence it was always in danger when any new popular 
faction arose. In 1830 a short lived labour party was 
started, but this came to nothing. In 1834 the first 
elective mayor was chosen by universal suffrage. The 
contest was very close ; and the Democrat, Lawrence, 
was chosen over the Whig, Verplanck, by only a couple 
of huudred votes, out of thirty-five thousand. Among 
the heads of the Democratic party were still to be found 
some influential merchants and the like; as yet the 
mere demagogue politicians did not dare to make them- 
selves the titular leaders. Lawrence was a wealthy gen- 
tleman. On New Year's day he threw open his doors 
to all callers, as was then the general custom. But the 
mass of ward-leaders and political " heelers " of every 
kind who thronged his house, turned it into a bear gar- 
den, destroying everything until he had to summon the 
police to rid him of his guests. The democracy was not 
yet quite used to power, and did not know how to 
behave. 

A year or two later one of the labour parties led a 
brief career in the city, arising — as has usually been 

13 



194 New York. 

the case — from a split in the Democratie party. Its 
adherents styled themselves " equal-lights men " or 
"anti-monopolists." By outsiders they were usually 
dubbed " Loco-focos," because at the outset of their career, 
in the course of a stormy meeting of the city Democ- 
racy in a hall, their opponents put out the gas ; where- 
upon they, having thoughtfully provided themselves 
with loco-foco matches, relit the gas, and brought the 
meeting to a triumphant close. The chief points in 
their political creed were hostility to banks and corpora- 
tions generally, and a desire to have all judges elected 
for short terms, so as to have them amenable to the peo- 
ple ; — that is, to have them administer the law, not in 
accordance with the principles of justice, but in accord- 
ance with the popular whim for the moment. They 
split up the Democratic party, and thus were of service 
to the Whigs during the two or three years of their 
existence. 

The Native American party began to make a stir 
about the time the Loco-focos came to an end. The 
Native Americans represented simply hostility to foreign- 
ers in general, and Catholic foreigners in particular. 
They therefore had no permanent root, as they merely 
represented a prejudice, — for depriving foreigners al- 
ready here of political rights is a piece of iniquitous 
folly, having no connection with the undoubted and 
evident wisdom of limiting immigration to our shores, 
and exercising a rigid supervision thereover. The Na- 
tive Americans led an intermittent party life for a score 
of years, ending as the Knownothings, who were swept 
out of sight by the rise of the Republican party. In 
1841 the Catholics very foolishly and wrongfully tried 



Growth of the City, issi-iseo. 195 

to form a separate party of their own, on account of 
irritation over the disposal of the public-school fund. 
They insisted that a portion of it should be given to 
them for their sectarian schools, and organized a party 
to support only such candidates as would back their de- 
mands. But by this time the people had become 
wedded to the public-school system, and the effort 
proved wholly fruitless. The only result was to give a 
great start to the Native American party, which as a con- 
sequence, in 1844, actually carried the mayoralty election. 
In spite of occasional interludes of this kind, how- 
ever, the Democratic party, under the leadership of 
Tammany Hall, in the long run always recovered their 
hold on the reins. As the years went by, the party 
escaped more and more from the control of the well-to- 
do merchants and business men, and fell into the hands 
of professional politicians of unsavory character. The 
judiciary was made elective in 1846; and most local 
officers were thenceforth chosen in this manner. The 
mass of poor and ignorant voters, mainly foreign born, 
but drilled and led by unscrupulous Americans, held 
the command, and contemptuously disregarded their 
former leaders. Business men shrank from going into 
politics. There was not much buying of voters, but 
election frauds, and acts of brutal intimidation and vio- 
lence at the polls, became more and more common. 
The Federal. State, and Jocal offices were used with abso- 
lute shamelessness to reward active political work. By 
the '50's, politics had sunk as low as they well could 
sink. Fernando Wood, an unscrupulous and cunning 
demagogue, whose financial honesty was more than 
doubtful, skilled in manipulating the baser sort of 



196 New York. 

ward politicians, became the " boss " of the city, and 
was finally elected mayor. His lieutenants were brutal 
rowdies of the type of Isaiali Kynders, his right hand 
man ; they ruled by force and fraud, and were hand in 
glove with the disorderly and semi-criminal classes. 
Both Wood and Kynders were native Americans, the 
former of English, the latter of Dutch ancestry. It 
would be difficult to pick out any two foreign-born men 
of similar stamp who were as mischievous. In 18p0 
street railways were started, and the franchises for them 
were in many cases procured by the bribery of the 
common council. This proved the final touch ; and it is 
from this year that the hopeless corruption of the local 
municipal legislature dates. In 1857 the State Legis- 
lature at Albany began a long and active course of dab- 
bling in our municipal matters — sometimes wisely and 
sometimes foolishly — by passing a charter which di- 
vided responsibility and power among the different 
local officers, and needlessly multiplied the latter by 
keeping up the fiction of separate governments for the 
county and city, which had really become identical. 
They also created local boards and commissions which 
were appointed by the state, not the city, authorities. 
This last act aroused intense hostility among the city 
politicians ; especially was this the case in regard to the 
new Police Board. The city authorities wished at all 
costs to retain the power of appointing and ruling the 
police in their own hands ; and they resisted by force of 
arms the introduction of the new system. Fernando 
Wood's old " municipal " police and the new State, or 
so-called " metropolitan " police fought for a couple of 
days in the streets, with considerable bloodshed. But 



Growth of the City, iszi-mo. 197 

the courts declared in favour of the constitutionality of 
the acts of the legislature, and the municipal authori- 
ties were forced to abandon their opposition. 

Throughout this period New York's public and pri- 
vate buildings were increasing in size and costliness as 
rapidly as in numbers. It is difficult to say as much 
for their beauty, as a whole. Nevertheless, some of them 
are decidedly handsome, — notably some of the churches, 
such as Trinity, and above all St. Patrick's, the coruer- 
stone of which was laid in 1858. A really great piece 
of architectural engineering was the Croton aqueduct 
which was opened for use in 1842. 

The city had also done something for that higher na- 
tional development, the lack of which makes material 
prosperity simply a source of national vulgarization. 
She did her share in helping forward the struggling 
schools of American painters and sculptors; and she 
did more than her share in founding American litera- 
ture. Sydney Smith's famous query, propounded in 
1820, was quite justified by the facts. Nobody of the 
present day docs read any American book which was 
then written, with two exceptions ; and the witty Dean 
could scarcely he expected to have any knowledge of 
Irving's first purely local work, while probably hardly a 
soul in England had so much as heard of that really 
wonderful volume, "The Federalist," Botli of these 
were New York hooks ; and New York may fairly claim 
to have been the birthplace of American literature. 
Immediately after 1820 Washington Irving and Feni- 
more Cooper won world-wide fame ; while Bryant was 
chief of a group of poets which included men like Bod- 
man Drake. For the first time we had a literature 



198 New York. 

worthy of being so called, which was not saturated with 
the spirit of servile colonialism, the spirit of humble imi- 
tation of things European. Our political life became full 
and healthy only after we had achieved political inde- 
pendence ; and it is quite as true that we never have 
done, and never shall do, anything really worth doing, 
whether in literature or art, except when working dis- 
tinctively as Americans. 

We are not yet free from the spirit of colonialism in 
art and letters; but the case was, and is, much worse 
witli our purely social life, — or at least with that por- 
tion of it which ought to be, and asserts itself to be, 
but emphatically is not, our best social life. In the 
" Potiphar Papers," Mr. Curtis, a New Yorker of whom 
all New Yorkers can be proud, has left a description 
which can hardly be called a caricature of fashionable 
New York society as it was in- the decade before the 
war. It is not an attractive picture. The city then 
contained nearly three quarters of a million inhabitant-!, 
and the conditions of life were much as they are to-day. 
The era of railroads and steamships was well under 
way ; all the political and social problems and evils 
which now exist, existed then, often in aom-avated form. 
The mere commercial classes were absorbed in making 
money, — a pursuit which of course becomes essentially 
ignoble when followed as an end and not as a means. 
It had become very easy to travel in Europe, and im- 
mense shoals of American tourists went thither every 
season, deriving but doubtful benefit from their tour. 
New York possessed a large wealthy class which did not 
quite know how to get most pleasure from its money, 
and which had not been trained, as all uood citizens 



Growth of the City, mi-mo. 199 

of the republic should be trained, to realize that in 
America every man of means and leisure must do some 
kind of work, whether in politics, in literature, in sci- 
ence, or in what, for lack of a better word, may be called 
philanthropy, if he wishes really to eujoy life, and to avoid 
being despised as a drone in the community. Moreover, 
they failed to grasp the infinite possibilities of enjqy- 
ment, of interest, and of usefulness, which American 
life offers to every man, rich or poor, if he have oidy 
heart and head. With singular poverty of imagination 
they proceeded on the assumption that to enjoy their 
wealth they must slavishly imitate the superficial feat- 
ures, and the defects rather than the merits, of the life 
of the wealthy classes of Europe, instead of borrowing- 
only its best traits, and adapting even these to their own 
surroundings. They put wealth above everything else, 
and therefore hopelessly vulgarized their lives. The 
shoddy splendours of the second French Empire natu- 
rally appealed to them, and so far as might be they im- 
itated its ways. Dress, manners, amusements, — all 
were copied from Paris ; and when they went to Europe, 
it was in Paris that the}' spent most of their time. To 
persons of intelligence and force their lives seemed 
equally dull at home and abroad. They took little in- 
terest in literature or politics; they did not care to 
explore and hunt and travel in their own country; 
they did not have the taste for athletic sport which is 
so often the one redeeming feature of the gilded youth 
of to-day, and which, if not very much when taken 
purely by itself, is at least something. Fashionable 
society was composed of two classes. There were, first, 
the people of good family, — those whose forefathers at 



200 New York. 

some time had played their parts manfully in the world, 
and who claimed some shadowy superiority on the 
strength of this memory of the past, unbacked by any 
proof of merit in the present. Secondly, there were 
those who had just made money, — the father having 
usually merely the money-getting faculty, the presence 
of which does not necessarily imply the existence of any 
other worthy quality whatever, the rest of the family 
possessing only the absorbing desire to spend what 
the father had earned. In the summer they all went 
to Saratoga or to Europe ; in winter they came back to 
New York. Fifth Avenue was becoming the fashion- 
able street, and on it they built their brownstone-front 
houses, all alike outside, and all furnished in the same 
style within, — heavy furniture, gilding, mirrors, glit- 
tering chandeliers. If a man was very rich he had a 
few feet more frontage, and more gilding, more mirrors, 
and more chandeliers. There was one incessant round 
of gaiety, but it possessed no variety whatever, and 
little interest. 

Of course there were plenty of exceptions to all these 
rules. There were many charming houses, there was 
much pleasant social life, just as there were plenty of 
honest politicians ; and there were multitudes of men 
and women well fitted to perform the grave duties and 
enjoy the great rewards of American life. But taken as 
a whole, the fashionable and political life of New York 
in the decade before the Civil War offers an instructive 
rather than an attractive spectacle. 



Recent History, isgo-isso. 201 



CHAPTER XIV. 

RECENT HISTORY. 18G0-1890. 

In 1860 New York had over eight hundred thousand 
inhabitants. During the thirty years that have since 
passed, its population has nearly doubled. If the city 
limits were enlarged, like those of London and Chicago, 
so as to take in the suburbs, the population would 
amount to some three millions. Recently there has 
been a great territorial expansion northward, beyond 
the Haarlem, by the admission of what is known as 
the Annexed District. The growth of wealth has fully 
kept pace with the growth of population. The city 
is one of the two or three greatest commercial and 
manufacturing centres of the world. 

The ten years between 1860 and 1870 form the worst 
decade in the city's political annals, although the sombre 
picture is relieved by touches of splendid heroism, 
martial prowess, and civic devotion. At the outbreak 
of the Civil War the city was — as it has since contin- 
ued to be — the stronghold of the Democratic party in 
the North ; and unfortunately, during the Rebellion, 
while the Democratic party contained many of the 
loyal, it also contained all of the disloyal, elements. A 
Democratic victory at the polls, hardly, if at all, less 
than a Confederate victory in the field, meant a Union 
defeat. A very large and possibly a controlling ele- 
ment in the city Democracy was at heart strongly dis- 



202 New York. 

union in sentiment, and showed the feeling whenever 
it dared. 

At the outset of the Civil War there was even an 
effort made to force the city into active rebellion. The 
small local Democratic leaders, of the type of Isaiah 
Eynders, the brutal and turbulent ruffians who led the 
mob and controlled the politics of the lower wards, 
openly and defiantly threatened to make common cause 
with the South, and to forbid the passage of Union 
troops through the city. The mayor, Fernando Wood, 
in January, 1861, proclaimed disunion to be "a fixed 
fact" in a message to the Common Council, and pro- 
posed that New York should herself secede and become 
a free city, with but a nominal diuVy upon imports. 
The independent commonwealth was to be named "Tri- 
Insula," as being composed of three islands, — Long, 
Staten, and Manhattan. The Common Council, a cor- 
rupt body as disloyal as Wood himself, received the 
message enthusiastically, and had it printed and circu- 
lated wholesale. 

But when Sumter was fired on the whole current 
changed like magic. There were many more good men 
than bad in New York ; but they had been supine, or 
selfish, or indifferent, or undecided, and so the bad had 
had it all their own way. The thunder of Sumter's 
guns waked the heart of the people to passionate 
loyalty. The bulk of the Democrats joined with the 
Republicans to show by word and act their fervent and 
patriotic devotion to the Union. Huge mass-meetings 
were held, and regiment after regiment was organized 
and sent to the front. Shifty Fernando Wood, true to 
his nature, went with the stream, and was loudest in 



Recent History, mo-mo. 203 

proclaiming his horror of rebellion. The city, through 
all her best and bravest men, pledged her faithful and 
steadfast support to the government at Washington. 
The Seventh Kegirnent of the New York National 
Guards, by all odds the best regiment in the United 
States Militia, was the first in the whole country to go 
to the front and reach Washington, securing it against 
any sudden surprise. 

The Union men of New York kept their pledge of 
loyalty in spirit and letter. Taking advantage of the 
intensity of the loyal excitement, they even elected a 
Republican mayor. The New Yorkers of means were 
those whose part was greatest in sustaining the nation's 
credit, while almost every high-spirited young man in 
the city went into the army. The city, from the begin- 
ning to the end of the war, sent her sons to the front 
by scores of thousands. Her troops alone would have 
formed a large army ; and on a hundred battle-fields, 
and throughout the harder trials of the long, dreary 
campaigns, they bore themselves with high courage and 
stern, unyielding resolution. Those who by a hard lot 
were forced to stay at home busied themselves in caring 
for the men at the front, or for their widows and 
orphans ; and the Sanitary Commission, the Allotment 
Commission, and other kindred organizations which did 
incalculable good, originated in New York. 

Yet the very energy with which New York sent her 
citizen soldiery to the front, left her exposed to a terrible 
danger. Much of the low foreign element, as well as 
the worst among the native-born roughs, had been 
hostile to the war all along, and a ferocious outbreak 
was produced by the enforcement of the draft in July, 



204 New York. 

1863. The mob, mainly foreign, especially Irish, but 
reinforced by all the native rascality of the city, broke 
out for three days in what are known as the draft riots. 
They committed the most horrible outrages, their hos- 
tility being directed especially against the unfortunate 
negroes, many of whom they hung or beat to deatli 
with lingering cruelty; and they attacked various 
charitable institutions where negroes were cared for. 
They also showed their hatred to the national govern- 
ment and its defenders in every way, and even set out 
to burn down a hospital tilled with w 7 ouuded Union 
soldiers, besides mobbing all government officials. From 
attacking government property they speedily went to 
assailing private property as well, burning and plunder- 
ing the houses of rich and poor alike, and threatened 
to destroy the whole city in their anarchic fury, — the 
criminal classes, as always in s-ueh a movement, taking 
the control into their own hands. Many of the baser 
Democratic politicians, in order to curry favour with the 
mob, sought to prevent effective measures being taken 
against it; and even the Democratic governor, Seymour, 
an estimable man of high private character, but utterly 
unfit to grapple with the times that tried men's souls, 
took refuge in temporizing, half measures, and conces- 
sions. The lioman Catholic archbishop and priests 
opposed and denounced the rioters with greater or less 
boldness, according to their individual temperaments. 

But the governing authorities, both national and 
municipal, acted with courage and energy. The 
American people are good-natured to the point of lax 
indifference; but once roused, they act with the most 
straightforward and practical resolution. Much fear 



Recent History, ueo-isdo. 205 

had been expressed lest the large contingent of Irish 
among the police and state troops would be lukewarm 
or doubtful, but throughout the crisis they showed to 
the full as much courage and steadfast loyalty as their 
associates of native origin. One of the most deeply- 
mourned victims of the mob was the gallant Colonel 
O'Brien of the Eleventh New York Volunteers, who 
had dispersed a crowd of rioters with considerable 
slaughter, and was afterward caught by them when 
alone, and butchered under circumstances of foul and 
revolting brutality. 

Most of the real working-men refused to join with 
the rioters, except when overawed and forced into their 
ranks ; and many of them formed themselves into armed 
bodies, and assisted to restore order. The city was bare 
of troops, for they had all been sent to the front to face 
Lee at Gettysburg ; and the police at first could not 
quell the mob. As regiment after regiment was hurried 
back to their assistance desperate street-fighting took 
place. The troops and police were thoroughly aroused, 
and attacked the rioters with the most wholesome de- 
sire to do them harm. In a very short time after the 
forces of order put forth their strength the outbreak was 
stamped out, and a lesson inflicted on the lawless and 
disorderly which they never entirely forgot. Two mil- 
lions of property had been destroyed, and many valu- 
able lives lost. But over twelve hundred rioters were 
slain, — an admirable object lesson to the remainder. 

It was several years before the next riot occurred. 

'This was of a race or religious character. The different 

nationalities in New York are in the habit of parading 

on certain days, — a particularly senseless and objec- 



2o6 New York. 

tionable custom. The Orangemen on this occasion 
paraded on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, 
with the usual array of flags and banners, covered with 
mottoes especially insulting to the Celtic Irish ; the lat- 
ter threatened to stop the procession, and made the 
attempt; but the militia had been called out, and after 
a moment's sharp fighting, in which three of their num- 
ber and seventy or eighty rioters were slain, the mob 
was scattered to the four winds. For the last twenty 
years no serious riots have occurred, and no mob has 
assembled which the police could not handle without 
the assistance of the State troops. The outbreaks that 
have taken place have almost invariably been caused 
by strikes or other labour troubles. Yet the general 
order and peacefulness should not blind us to the fact 
that there exists ever in our midst a slumbering " vol- 
cano under the city," as under all other large cities of 
the civilized world. This danger must continue to exist 
as long as our rich men look at life from a standpoint 
of silly frivolity, or else pursue a commercial career in 
a spirit of ferocious greed and disregard of justice, while 
the poor feel with sullen anger the pressure of many 
evils, — some of their own making, and some not, — 
and are far more sensible of the wrongs they suffer 
than of the folly of trying to right them under the lead 
of ignorant visionaries or criminal demagogues. 

For several years after the war there was a perfect 
witches' Sabbath of political corruption in New York 
City, which culminated during the mayoralty of Oakey 
Hall, who was elected in 1869. The Democratic party 
had absolute control of the municipal government; and 
this meant that the city was at the mercy of the ring 



Recent History, mo-iszo. 207 

of utterly unscrupulous and brutal politicians who then 
controlled that party, and who in time of need had 
friends among some of their so-called Republican oppo- 
nents on whom they could always rely. Repeating, 
ballot-box stuffing, fraudulent voting and counting of 
votes, and every kind of violence and intimidation at 
the polls turned the elections into criminal farces. 
The majorities by which the city was carried for the 
Democratic presidential candidate Seymour in 1868, 
represented the worst electoral frauds which the coun- 
try ever witnessed, — far surpassing even those by which 
Polk had been elected over Clay. 

This was also the era of gigantic stock-swindling. 
The enormously rich stock-speculators of Wall Street in 
their wars with one another and against the ueneral 
public, found ready tools and allies to be hired for 
money in the State and city politicians, and in judges 
who were acceptable alike to speculators, politicians, and 
mob. There were continual contests for the control of 
railway systems, and "operations" in stocks which barely 
missed being criminal, and which branded those who 
took part in them as infamous in the sight of all honest 
men ; and the courts and legislative bodies became 
parties to the iniquity of men composing that most 
dangerous of all classes, the wealthy criminal class. 

Matters reached their climax in the feats of the 
" Tweed Ring." William M. Tweed was the master 
spirit among the politicians of his own party, and also 
secured a hold on a number of the local Republican 
leaders of the baser sort. He was a coarse, jovial, able 
man, utterly without scruple of any kind ; and he or- 
ganized all of his political allies and adherents into a 



208 New York. 

gigantic " ring " to plunder the city. Incredible sums 
of money were stolen, especially in the construction of 
the new Court House. When the frauds were dis- 
covered, Tweed, secure in his power, asked in words 
that have become proverbial, " What are you going to 
do about it?" But the end came in 1871. Then the 
decent citizens, irrespective of party, banded together, 
urged on by the newspapers, especially the Times and 
Harper's Weekly, — for the city press deserves the chief 
credit for the defeat of Tweed. At the fall elections 
the ring candidates were overwhelmingly defeated ; and 
the chief malefactors were afterward prosecuted, and 
many of them imprisoned, Tweed himself dying in 
a felon's cell. The offending judges were impeached, or 
resigned in time to escape impeachment. 

For the last twenty years our politics have been 
better and purer, though with plenty of corruption and 
jobbery left still. There are shoals of base, ignorant, 
vicious "heelers" and "ward workers," who form a 
solid, well-disciplined army of evil, led on by abler men 
whose very ability renders them dangerous. Some of 
these leaders are personally corrupt ; others are not, 
but do almost as much harm as if they were, because 
they divorce political from private morality. As a 
prominent politician recently phrased it, they believe 
that " the purification of politics is an iridescent dream ; 
the decalogue and the golden rule have no place in a 
political campaign." The cynicism, no less silly than 
vicious, with which such men regard political life is 
repaid by the contemptuous anger with which -they 
themselves are regarded by all men who are proud of 
their country and wish her well. 



Recent History, mo-mo. 209 

If the citizens can be thoroughly waked up, and a 
plain, naked issue of right and wrong presented to 
them, they can always be trusted. The trouble is that 
in ordinary times the self-seeking political mercenaries 
are the only persons who both keep alert and understand 
the situation ; and they commonly reap their reward. 
The mass of vicious and ignorant voters — especially 
among those of foreign origin — forms a trenchant 
weapon forged ready to their hand, and presents a 
standing menace to our prosperity ; and the selfish 
and short-sighted indifference of decent men is only one 
degree less dangerous. Yet of recent years there has 
been among men of character and good standing a 
steady growth of interest in, and of a feeling of respon- 
sibility for, our politics. This otherwise most healthy 
growth has been at times much hampered and warped 
by the political ignorance and bad judgment of the 
leaders in the movement. Too often the educated 
men who without having had any practical training 
as politicians yet turn their attention to politics, are 
and remain utterly ignorant of the real workings of our 
governmental system, and in their attitude toward our 
public men oscillate between excessive credulity con- 
cerning their idol of the moment and jealous, ignorant 
prejudice against those with whom they temporarily 
disagree. They forget, moreover, that the man who 
really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere 
critic, — the man who actually does the work, even if 
roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks 
or writes about how it ought to be done. 

Neither the unintelligent and rancorous partisan, 
nor the unintelligent and rancorous independent, is a 

14 



210 New York. 

desirable member of tbe body politic ; and it is unfortu- 
nately true of each of them that he seems to regard 
with special and sour hatred, not the bad man, but the 
good man with whom he politically differs. 

Above all, every young man should realize that it is a 
disgrace to him not to take active part in some way in 
the work of governing the city. Whoever fails to do 
this, fails notably in his duty to the Commonwealth. 

The character of the immigration to the city is 
changing. The Irish, who in 1860 formed three fifths 
of the foreign-born population, have come in steadily 
lessening numbers, until the Germans stand well at the 
head; while increasing multitudes of Italians, Roles, 
Bohemians, Kussian Jews, and Hungarians — both 
Sclaves and Magyars — continually arrive. The English 
and Scandinavian elements among the immigrants have 
likewise increased. At the present time four fifths of 
New York's population are of foreign birth or parentage ; 
and among them there has been as yet but little race 
intermixture, though the rising generation is as a whole 
well on the way to complete Americanization. Cer- 
tainly hardly a tenth of the people are of old Revo- 
lutionary American stock. The Catholic Church has 
continued to grow at a rate faster than the general rate 
of increase. The Episcopalian and Lutheran are the 
only Protestant Churches whereof the growth has kept 
pace with that of the population. 

The material prosperity of the city has increased 
steadily. There has been a marked improvement in 
architecture ; and one really great engineering work, 
the bridge across the East River, was completed in 
1883. The stately and beautiful Riverside Drive, 



Recent History, mo-mo. 211 

skirting the Hudson, along the hills which front the 
river, from the middle of the island northward, is well 
worth mention. It is one of the most striking roads or 
streets of which any city can boast, and the handsome 
houses that are springing up along it bid fair to make 
the neighbourhood the most attractive portion of New 
York. Another attractive feature of the city is Central 
Park, while many other parks are being planned and 
laid out beyond where the town has as yet been built 
up. There are large numbers of handsome social clubs, 
such as the Knickerbocker, Union, and University, and 
many others of a politico-social character, — the most 
noted of them, alike for its architecture, political influ- 
ence, and its important past history, being the Union 
League Club. 

There are many public buildings which are extremely 
interesting as showing the growth of a proper civic 
spirit, and of a desire for a life with higher possibilities 
than money-making. There has been an enormous in- 
crease in the number of hospitals, many of them admir- 
ably equipped and managed ; and the numerous News- 
boys' Lodging Houses, Night Schools, Working-Girls' 
Clubs and the like, bear witness to the fact that many 
New Yorkers who have at their disposal time or money 
are alive to their responsibilities, and are actively striv- 
ing to help their less fortunate fellows to help them- 
selves. The Cooper Union building, a gift to the city 
for the use of all its citizens, in the widest sense, keeps 
alive the memory of old Peter Cooper, a man whose 
broad generosity and simple kindliness of character, 
while not rendering him fit for the public life into 
which he at times sought entrance, yet inspired in New 



2i2 New York. 

Yorkers of every class a genuine regard such as they 
i'elt for no other philanthropist. Indeed, uncharitable- 
ness and lack of generosity have never been New York 
failings ; the citizens are keenly sensible to any real, 
tangible distress or need. A blizzard in Dakota, an 
earthquake in South Carolina, a flood in Pennsylvania, 
— after any such catastrophe hundreds of thousands of 
dollars are raised in New York at a day's notice, for the 
relief of the sufferers ; while, on the other hand, it is a 
difficult matter to raise money for a monument or a 
work of art. 

It is necessary both to appeal to the practical busi- 
ness sense of the citizens and to stir the real earnest- 
ness and love of country which lie underneath the 
somewhat coarse-grained and not always attractive sur- 
face of the community, in order to make it show its real 
strength. Thus, there is no doubt that in case of any 
important foreign war or domestic disturbance New 
York would back up the general government with men 
and money to a practically unlimited extent. For all 
its motley population, there is a most wholesome un- 
derlying spirit of patriotism in the city, if it can only 
be roused. Few will question this who saw the great 
processions on land and water, and the other ceremonies 
attendant upon the celebration of the one hundredth 
anniversary of the adoption of the Federal Constitution. 
The vast crowds which thronged the streets were good- 
humoured and orderly to a degree, and were evidently 
interested in much more than the mere spectacular part 
of the- celebration. They showed by every action their 
feeling that it was indeed peculiarly their celebration ; 
for it commemorated the hundred years' duration of a 



Recent History, mo-isw. 213 

government which, with many shortcomings, had never- 
theless secured order and enforced law, and yet was 
emphatically a government of the people, giving to the 
workingman a chance which he has never had else- 
where. In all the poorer quarters of the city, where 
the population was overwhelmingly of foreign birth or 
origin, the national flag, the stars and stripes, hung from 
every window, and the picture of Washington was dis- 
played wherever there was room. Flag and portrait 
alike were tokens that those who had come to our 
shores already felt due reverence and love for the grand 
memory of the man who, more than any other, laid the 
foundation of our government; and that they already 
challenged as their own American nationality and Amer- 
ican life, glorying in the Nation's past and confident in 
its future. 

In science and art, in musical and literary develop- 
ment, much remains to be wished for ; yet something has 
already been done. The building of the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, of the American Museum of Natural 
History, of the Metropolitan Opera House, the gradual 
change of Columbia College into a University, — all show 
a development which tends to make the city more and 
more attractive to people of culture ; and the growth of 
literary and dramatic clubs, such as the Century and 
the Players, is scarcely less significant. The illustrated 
monthly magazines — the Century, Scribners, and Har- 
per's — occupy an entirely original position of a very 
high order in periodical literature. The greatest piece 
of literary work which has been done in America, or in- 
deed anywhere, of recent years, was done by a citizen of 
New York, — not a professed man of letters, but a great 



214 A r £iv York. 

General, an Ex-President of the United States, writing 
his memoirs on his death-bed, to save his family from 
want. General Grant's book has had an extraordinary 
sale among the people at large, though even yet hardly 
appreciated at its proper worth by the critics ; and it is 
scarcely too high praise to say that, both because of the 
intrinsic worth of the matter, and because of its strength 
and simplicity as a piece of literary work, it almost 
deserves to rank with the speeches and writings of 
Abraham Lincoln. 

The fact that General Grant toward the end of his 
life made New York his abode, — as General Sherman 
has since done, — illustrates what is now a well-marked 
tendency of prominent men throughout the country to 
come to this city to live. There is no such leaning 
toward centralization, socially or politically, in the 
United States as in most European countries, and no 
one of our cities will ever assume toward the others 
a position similar to that held in their own countries 
by London, Paris, Vienna, or Berlin. There are in the 
United States ten or a dozen cities each of which 
stands as the social and commercial, though rarely as 
the political, capital of a district as large as an average 
European kingdom. No one of them occupies a merely 
provincial, position as compared with any other; while 
the political capital of the country, the beautiful city 
of Washington, stands apart with a most attractive and 
unique life of its own. There is thus no chance for 
New York to take an unquestioned leadership in all 
respects. Nevertheless, its life is so intense and so 
varied, and so full of manifold possibilities, that it has 
a special and peculiar fascination for ambitious and 



Recent. History. 1S60-1S90. 215 

high-spirited men of every kind, whether they wish to 
enjoy the fruits of past toil, or whether they have yet 
their fortunes to make, and feel confident that they can 
swim in troubled waters, — for weaklings have small 
chance of forging to the front against the turbulent tide 
of our city life. The truth is that every man worth 
his salt has open to him in New York a career of 
boundless usefulness and interest. 

As fur the upper social world, the fashionable world, 
it is much as it was when portrayed in the " Potiphar 
Papers," save that modern society has shifted the shrine 
at which it pays comical but sincere homage from Paris 
to Londou. Perhaps it is rather better, for it is less 
provincial and a triHe more American. But a would-be 
upper class based mainly on wealth, in which it is the 
exception and not the rule for a man to be of any real 
account in the national life, whether as a politician, a 
literary man, or otherwise, is of necessity radically de- 
fective and of little moment. 

Grim dangers confront us in the future, yet there is 
more ground to believe that we shall succeed than that 
we shall fail in overcoming them. Taking into account 
the enormous mass of immigrants, utterly unused to 
self-government of any kind, who have been thrust 
into our midst, and are even yet not assimilated, the 
wonder is not that universal suffrage has worked so 
badly, but that it has worked so well. We are better, 
not worse off, than we were a generation ago. There is 
much gross civic corruption and commercial and social 
selfishness and immorality, upon which we are in honour 
bound to wage active and relentless war. But honesty 
and moral cleanliness are the rule; and under the laws 



216 New York. 

order is well preserved, and all men are kept secure in 
the possession of life, liberty and property. The sons 
and grandsons of the immigrants of fifty years back 
have as a whole become good Americans, and have 
prospered wonderfully, both as regards their moral and 
material well-being. There is no reason to suppose that 
the condition of the working classes as a whole has 
grown worse, though there are enormous bodies of them 
whose condition is certainly very bad. There are grave 
social dangers and evils to meet, but there are plenty 
of earnest men and women who devote their minds and 
energies to meeting them. With many very serious 
shortcomings and defects, the average New Yorker yet 
possesses courage, energy, business capacity, much gen- 
erosity of a practical sort, and shrewd, humorous com- 
mon-sense. The greedy tyranny of the unscrupulous 
rich and the anarchic violence of the vicious and ignor- 
ant poor are ever threatening dangers ; but though 
there is every reason why we should realize the gravity 
of the perils ahead of us, there is none why we should 
not face them with confident and resolute hope, if only 
each of us, according to the measure of his capacity, 
will with manly honesty and good faith do his full 
share of the all-important duties incident to American 
citizenship. 



ISTDEX 



ACADIA 

Acadia, 3. 

Adventure, an age of, 1, 2. 

Advisory Council, Minuit's, 15; Stuy- 
vesant's, 30. 

Africa, early trade with, 74, 75. 

A'btny, Hudson's arrival near site of, 
6; establishment of post near site, 
9; refuses allegiance to Leisler's 
rule, 68; trade with, 74. 

Aldermen, first, 41; office abolished, 
45; elected by freeholders, 55; dis- 
orderly election for, 85; "rights" 
of, 146; how elected after Revolu- 
tion, 146; a local legislature, 146. 

Algonquins, massacre of, 23; reasons 
for their defeats, 24. 

Allotment Commission, the, 203. 

America, Spanish possessions in, 2, 
3; uncertain ownership in early 
times, 3. 

American Fur Company, 179. 

American Museum of Natural His- 
tory, 213. 

Amusements, of early settlers, 33, 95; 
at beginning of nineteenth century, 
167, 168. 

Anarchy, threatened, 25. 

And r os, Sir Edmund, appointed gov- 
ernor, 48; reinstates English form 
of government, 48; makes English 
the official language, 48 ; character 
of his rule, 49; grants monopoly of 
bolting and exporting flour, 49; 
abolishes Indian slavery, 50-, hos- 
tility to Puritans, 50; summoned 



BAKERY 

to England, 51 ; restored to favour, 
51; reappointed, 57; imprisonment 
of, 58; consequences of fall of, 60. 

Annexed District, the, 201. 

Ant i- Monopolist party, 194. 

Architecture, 197, 210. 

Aristocratic element, 14, 40, 94 and 
note. 

Aiistocratic party, in 1689,61; sup- 
ported by Fletcher, 79, 80 ; trial of 
leaders for treason, 85. 

Armorial bearings, 94. 

Art, encouragement of, 197. 

Assembly, the, constitution of, 54; 
early acts of, 54; property qualifi- 
cation for election to, 71; struggles 
in, 72, 73; Fletcher's interference 
with elections for, 79, 80 ; charac- 
teristics of, 81; quarrels with 
Fletcher, 81; parsimony as regards 
defences, 81, 106, 107; condemns 
Roman Catholic priests to death, 
83; issues paper money, 88; mi- 
nority of popular party in, 117 ; set 
a*ide, and replaced by Provincial 
Congress, 128. 

Astor, John Jacob, 178, 179. 

Astor Library, 179. 

Astor Place Riots, 191, 192. 

Asylums, 169. 

Australia, owes practical indepen- 
dence to United States, 108. 

Backwoodsman, evolution of the, 20. 
Bihery, the first, 16. 



218 



IXDEX. 



BALLSTON 

Ballston Springs, 108. 

Bankruptcy of btates, 147. 

Baltics, chartering of, 1GG. 

Baptists, refuge for, 22 ; persecuted 
by Stuyvesant, 35; strength before 
the Revolution and at present day, 
90. 

Battery Pari, 1G8. 

Bit yard, Col. Nicholas, leader of aris- 
tocratic party in 1GS0, 61; colonel 
of train-bands, 62 ; chased from the 
city, G7. 

Bayard House, feast at, 152. 

Beekman, David, 128, note. 

Beekman, William, 128, note. 

Btllomont, Earl of, succeeds Gov. 
Fletcher, 82; character, 82, 84; 
favours Leislerians and popular 
pirty, 82; honours bodies of Leisler 
and Milborne, 82; connection with 
Capt. Kidd, 83; land policy of, 84; 
death, 84. 

Berrian, John, 129, note. 

Bigotry, 57. 

Billeting Act, opposition to, 117, 
118. 

Binckts, Adm., takes the city, 45. 

Blackball Line of packets, 181. 

Block, Adrian, loses vessel by fire, 7; 
builds first ship in American wa- 
ters, 7. 

Blockade of city, 172. 

Bogardus, Dominie, 17, 23. 

Bohemian immigration, 210. 

Bond servants, 97, 98. 

Bos/on, Mass., mail between New 
York and, 44; compared with New 
York in 1710, 89; sentiment and 
action about Tea Act, 120; New 
York refuses aid to British garrison 
at, 127. 

B 'Ston Massacre, not first bloodshed 
in Revolution, 120. 

Boneries, 15. 

Bowling Green, Stamp Act riots on, 
11. i. 



CANAL 

Brazil, despoiled by the West India 
Company, 11. 

Bread riots, 192. 

Breda, Peace of, 42. 

Brewery, the first, 1G. 

Bribery, . early, 82; Gov. Cornbury 
influenced by, 85; in street rail- 
way cases, 19G. 

British fleet, New York the base of 
operations of, 131; action on the 
Hudson, 13G. 

British occupation, 137-141. 

British troops, New York the base of 
operations of, 131 ; make New York 
their headquarters, 137; treatment 
of captured city, 138, 139. 

Brockholls, Anthony, Lt.-Gov., in 
charge of colony, 51; inefficiency, 
51. 

Brooklyn, L. I., Revolutionary forces 
at, 133. 

Brown, Charles Brockden, 171. 

Buyout, William Cullen, 197. 

Burgomasters, abolition of, 41; office 
restored, 45. 

Burr, Aaron, in retreat at Kip's Bay, 
135; a resident of New York, 149; 
power in city democracy, 155 ; 
elected senntor, 155; disliked by 
Hamilton, 155; defeat in 1799. 155; 
candidate for Vice-Presidency, 156; 
tactics in election of 1800, 156, 157; 
elected Vice-President, 157; tie- 
vote in Electoral College, 159; an- 
tagonism of Jefferson to, 162; 
driven out of Democratic party, 
163; candidate for governorship, 
163; kills Hamilton in duel. 104; 
ostracized, 164, bill to introduce 
water into the city, 166. 

Canada, futile expedition against, 
68. 69; effect of English conquest 
of, on American history, 104, 109. 

Canal Street, site of, 12; origin of 
name, 31. 



Index. 



219 



CAPITAL, 

Capital, New York the Federal, 152. 

Catskill Mountains, 1. 

Centennial celebration of adoption 
of Federal Constitution, 212. 

Central Park, 211. 

Century Club, 213. 

" Century Magazine," the, 213. 

Charities, 169, 211. 

Charles 11., death of, 55. 

Charter of 1857, 19G. 

Charter of Liberties and Privileges, 
54. 

Chatham, Earl of, possibilities in his 
statesmanship, 113. 

China trade, 143. 

Cholera, plague of 1832, 190. 

Christiansen. Hendrik, head of Dutch 
posts, 8; death of, 8. 

Christmas, observance of, 95. 

Church, the first, 1G, 31. 

Churches, turned into prisons, 138, 
140; repair of, 142. 

Church of England, the State church, 
71, 92; the fashionable organiza- 
tion, 92; controls King's College, 
92; enmity to, 127. See also Epis- 
copalian. 

Citizenship, early admission of for- 
eigners to, 39, 54. 

City Council, dispersed by Leisler's 
troops. 64, 67. 

Ci'y Hall, headquarters of Lt.-Gov. 
Ingoldshy, 70; used as prison, 140. 

Civil rights, guaranteed by Gov. 
Nicolls, 39. 

Civil War, early threats of. 148; 
New York during the, 201-205. 

Class divisions, 166. 

Class government, 71, 72. 

Clergy, action of Roman Catholic, 
during draft riots, 204. 

Clergyman, the first regular, 17. 

Clinton, De Witt, first scholar of 
Columbia College, 142; rise of, 155; 
member of Council of Appoint- 
ment, 159; principles of appcint- 



COLUMBIA 

merit to office, 161; mayor, 162; 
fights a duel, 164; constructs Erie 
Canal, 177; introduces spoils sys- 
tem, 177. 

Clinton, Gen. George, opposes evacu- 
ation of New York, 134; character, 
134, 150; opposes union of States, 
150; election frauds in interest of, 
153; management of patronage, 
154, 161; elected governor, 159; 
elected Vice-President, 163 

Clinton family, leaders of Democracy, 
156; distrust of Burr, 157; appor- 
tionment of patronage among, 162; 
opposition to Burr, 102, 163. 

Clipper ships, 181. 

Clubs, 43, 211, 213. 

Coast trade, 74 

CoiJ-jisherits, 44. 

Coffee-houses, 97. 

Colden, Gov. Cadwallader, attempts 
to enforce Stamp Act, 115; hung 
in effigy, 115; burned in effigy, 
116; yields custody of stamps to 
municipal authorities, 116. 

Colonial families, descent of promi- 
nent, 72, note. 

Colonialism, spirit of, 198. 

Colonial system, vice of, 13, 104. 

Colonies, Congress of, 68, 69; Eng- 
lish restrictions on trade of, 80; 
Torv and neutral element in, 
124. 

Colonists, first, 11 •, love of liberty 
among English, 104, 105; home 
tie of, a drawback, 110; feeling of, 
on their reputed inferiority, 125, 
120. 

Colonization, European theory of, 
105, 106; change 111 that theory, 
108. 

Columbia College (see also King's 
College), name of King's College 
changed to, 142; development into 
a university, 213. 

Columbia Carditis, 1G8. 



220 



Index. 



COLVE 

Colre, Capt. Anthony, receives sur- 
render of city, 45; character, 46; 
troubles with Long Island Puritans, 
46 ; establishes military law, 46, 47; 
imposes heavy taxes, 47 ; succeeded 
by Sir Edmund Andros, 48. 

Commerce, influence of, 8 ; blow to, 
by war between Holland and Eng- 
land, 44; early, 74; restrictions on, 
80; increase of, 143, 201. 

Commercial honour, low tone of, 147. 

Committee of Fifty-one, 121, 122. 

Committee of Mechanics, 121, 122. 

Committee of Safety, 68. 

Committee of Sixty', 122. 

Committee of Vigilance, 121. 

Common, the, 96; Stamp Act rioting 
on, 115. 

Common Council, disloyalty of, 202. 

Connecticut, joins expedition against 
Canada, 69. 

Connecticut River, Van Twiller's 
fort on, 17, 18. 

Connecticut Volley, English take 
possession of, 18, 22. 

Constables, election of, 146. 

Constitution of New York, abolishes 
religious disabilities, 142, 143; 
character of framers, 144 ; adoption 
of a new, 173, 175. 

Constitution of United States, adop- 
tion of, 148 ; position of Hamilton 
in regard to, 150, 151; procession 
in honour of, 151, 152; centennial 
celebration of adoption of, 212. 

Continental Army, motley character 
of, 129. 

Continental Congress, first idea of 
holding, 121; the first and second, 
123. 

Convicts, early importations of, 97, 
98. 

Cooper, James Fenimore, 197. 

Cooper, Peter, 211. 

Cooper Union, 211. 

Cornbury, Lord Edward H. ap- 



DEMOCRACY 

pointed governor, 85; character, 

85, 8j; misappropriates public 

funds, 86; removal of, 86. 
Corruption, political, 206-208, 215. 
Cosby, Gov. William, character, 102 ; 

libelled by Zenger, 102. 
Costume, of early Dutch settlers, 32 ; 

in colonial period, 78; at beginning 

of nineteenth century, 167. 
Council of Appointment, 144, 145 ; 

power of, 161; abolition of, 175. 
Council of Twelve, Kieft's, 24, 

25. 
Court house, frauds in construction 

of, 208. 
Court party, known as Tories, 103; 

Episcopalians and Dutch in, 112; 

great families the leaders in, 112; 

revival of, 117. 
Criminal classes, large proportion of, 

among early settlers, 29. 
Croton aqueduct, 197. 
■Crow's Nest, 7. 
Curtis, George W., author of " Poti- 

phar Papers," 198. 
Customs duties, refusal to pay, 51. 

Declaration of Independence, sup- 
ported by best citizens, 128. 

Declaration of Eights by Stamp Act 
Congress, 114. 

Defences, inferiority of, 129, 130. 

De Lancey, James, appointed chief- 
justice, 102; conduct in trial of 
Zenger, 102. 

De Lancey family, armorial bearings 
of, 94; leaders of court partv, 103, 
112, 117. 

Delaware River, Swedish possessions 
on, 3; Dutehcolony on, 18; Swedish 
colon}' defeated by Stuyvesant, 33; 
extinction of Swedish Lutheran 
Church on, 91. 

Demagogism, 147. 

Democracy, tendencies of Dutch set- 
tlers towards, 34; early limitations 



L\'DEX. 



221 



DEMOCRATIC 

of, 72; rise against the oligarchy, 
111; early opinions about, 141; ab- 
solute sway of, 1G5. 

Democratic party, rise of name, 152 ; 
control State and city, 159; merci- 
less use of patronage, 1G3 ; support 
the French, 165; split in, 194; con- 
trolled by Tammany Hall, 195; 
power of, 201; corruption in, 200- 
208. 

De Peyster family, leaders in the 
court party, 112. 

Detroit, wrested from the French, 4. 

De Vries, patroon, 21, 23. 

Disorders, after fall of Andres, GO; 
after Belloniont's death, 84, 85. 

Doctors' Mob, the, 143. 

Dominie, first house for the, 16. 

Dongan, Thomas, appointed gover- 
nor, 52; policy and character, 52- 
56 ; recalled, 57. 

Draft riots, 203-205. 

Drake, Rodman, 197. 

Drinking habits, early colonial, 95. 

Duane, Jumes, first mayor after Rev- 
olution, 146. 

Duels, 156. 

Dutch, settlements in America, 3, 4 ; 
defeated by Plymouth colonists, 18 ; 
characteristics of, 19, 20; massacre 
by Indians, 23; religious liberty 
under English rule, 39, 41; recap- 
ture of city by, 45. 

Dutch Church, rights guaranteed to, 
71; extinction prevented, 91. 

Dutch rule, transition to English, 
38-42; restoration of, 45-47; end 
of, 47. 

East Indies, early trade with, 74. 

East River bridge, 210. 

Education, in early colonial times, 
9fi ; foundation of free-school sys- 
tem, 170. 

Election riots, 193. 

Elections, intimidation at, 80, dis- 



EVACUATIOX 

orderly aldermanic, 85 ; frauds at, 
207. 

Electoral College, tie-vote for Jeffer- 
son and Burr, 159. 

Electric telegraph, development of, 
177, 178. 

Eleventh New York Volunteers, 205. 

Embargo, the, 165. 

England, the cradle of seamen, 1 ; 
immigration from, 22, 210; seizes 
New Amsterdam, 36, 37; war with 
Holland, 42, 44; early trade with, 
74; treatment of colonies compared 
with other nations, 104; how col- 
onies might have been preserved, 
109, 110. 

English, settlements in America, 3; 
early settlers, 12, 28; M in nit's re- 
lations with, 15; Tan Twiller's re- 
lations with, 17, 18 ; immigration 
of, 22, 210; early settlers belong to 
aristocratic party, 40; regain pos- 
session of New York, 47. See also 

BlUTISH. 

English law, supremacv of. in New 

York, 4. 
English rule, transition from Dutch 

to, 38-42 ; overthrown by the 

Dutch, 45-47; restored, 47. 
English-speaking race, marvellous 

spread of, 105. 
Episcopalian Church, the fashionable 

organization, 92; growth of, 210. 

See also Church of England. 
Episcopalian churches, closed for fear 

of mobs, 127; reopened during 

British occupation, 138. 
Episcopalians, detestation of Leisler, 

66 ; persecutions of Presbvterians 

by, 90, 92. 
Equality, necessity of, in the Federal 

Union, 110. 
Equal Rights Men. 194. 
Erie Canal, effect on city, 177. 
Evacuation, by Washington's troops, 

134; by British troops, 141. 



222 



Index. 



EVEIITSEN 

Evoisen, Ad in. Cornelia, takes the 
city, 45; makes Colve director of 
the province, 46. 

Exchange, foundation of the, 44. 

Execution Dock, Captain Kidd hung 
at, 83. 

Explorers, an age of, 1, 2. 

Farming, advance in, 21. 

"Federalist," the, 150, 197. 

Federalist party, New York the 
seat of power of, 148, 149; struggle 
•with Anti-Federalists, 152, first b.'g 
break in, 154; successes of, 155; 
fall of, 157 ; merciless use of patron- 
age, 163 ; support the British, 
105. 

Federal Union, equality a necessity 
in, 110, 111. 

Feudal privileges, 14, 21. 

Fifth Avenue, 200. 

Fires, incendiary, in 1741, 100; dur- 
ing British occupation, 139; large 
losses by, 192. 

Fire-water, introduction among In- 
dians, 6. 

Fisheries, early, 44, 55, 74. 

Fitch, John, pioneer in steam navi- 
gation, 172. 

Fl tcher, Benjamin, governor, 79; 
connection with pirates, 79; char- 
acter, 79, 80; quarrels with New 
England and with Assembly, 81; 
recalled, 81. 

Florida, 3. 

Flour, monopoly of bolting and ex- 
porting, 49. 

Fort, early, 12. 

Fort Orange, 38. 

France, enmity to, 58, 73; wars with, 
74. 

Franchise, different kinds of 144. 

Freeholders, privileges of, 97, 144, 
146. 

French, settlements in America, 3; 
characteristics of pioneers, 19. 



HAARLEM 

French wars, retarded American 
Revolution, 109. 

French war-ship, terrorizes city, 86. 

Frontenac, Louis de B., cruelties 
in New York and New England, 
G8. 

Frontiersman, evolution of, 20. 

Fulton, Robert, introduces steam 
navigation, 171; builds steam frig- 
ate, 172. 

Fur trade, 6-9, 15, 16, 108, 179. 

G<ge, Gen. Thomas, commander of 
garrison, 115; yields stamps to 
municipal authorities, 116. 

Gallatin, Albert, abhorrence of par- 
tisan proscription, 161. 

Gallows, the, 31. 

" Gazette," the, first newspaper, 
101. 

" General Armstrong," fight of the, 

173. 
,George HE, effect of his blunders, 
II 3; address by Stamp Act Con- 
gress to, 114; erection of monu- 
ment to, 117 ; monument destroved, 
117. 

German Calvinists, in the eighteenth 
century, 90. 

German Lutherans, in the eighteenth 
century, 90. 

Germans, early settlers, 12. 28; im- 
migration of, 87,184, 185, 187-189, 
210; furnish large proportion of 
auxiliaries to British troops, 133, 
note. 

Governor, restrictions on power of, 
145. 

Grant, Gen. U. S., Memoirs of, 213, 
214. 

Guinea Coast, t'ade with, 75. 

Gustavus Adolphus, influence of his 
death on America's future, 3, 4. 

Haarlem Heights, American victory 
at, 135. 



IXDEX. 



223 



HALE 

Hale, Nathan, capture and execution 
of, 139. 140. 

;< Half Moon," the, reaches the Hud- 
son, 1; returns to Holland, 6, 7. 

Hall, Oakey, mayoralty of, 206. 

Hall of Justice, 31. 

Hamilton, Alexander, conservative 
principles of, 113.; attitude in the 
Revolution, 125 ; in retreat at Kip's 
Bay, 135; leader of Federalist 
party, 149; character, 149, 153, 154; 
defender of Loyalists. 149; success 
in Federal movement, 150, 151 ; 
procession in honor of, 151, 152; 
heart of Fedeiali-t party, 153; Sec- 
retary of Treasury, 154; Living- 
ston's opinion of, 154 ; dislike of 
Burr, 155; maltreatment of, 156; 
killed by Burr, 104. 

" Harper's Magazine," 213. 

" Harper's Weekly," exposures of 
Tweed, 208. 

Hartford, Conn., mail between New 
York and, 44. 

Hebrew immigration, 210 

Hessians, employment as troops, and 
hatred of, Vil, 132. 

Hickey, Thomas, hung for plot 
against Washington, 132. 

Holland, war with England, 42, 
44. 

Horse-racing under Governor Love- 
lace, 43? 

ILspitnls, 109, 211. 

Houses, of early settlers, 31, 32; at 
beginning of nineteenth centurv, 
108; modern, 200. 

Howe, Lord, attacks the city, 133- 
130; victories of, 133-136. 

Hudson, Hendrik, discovers Hudson 
IJiver, 1, 5-7; returns to Hol- 
land, 7. 

Hudson Bay Company, 14. 

Hudson River, in hands of the Dutch, 
3; early belief about, 5; scenery, 6, 
7; new settlements on, 21 , opera- 



IHIS.H 

tions of British fleet on, 133; steam- 
boats on, 177. 

Huguenots, early settlers, 12, 28, 39, 
41; religious liberty under English 
rule, 41, bent-fits conferred on, 54; 
element in population, 58, 91. 

Hungarian immigration, 210. 

Hunter, Robert, appointed governor, 
87. 

Immigrant.', a bad class of, 98. 

Immigration, encouragement of, 21, 
22; increase of, 109, 173, 174, 170, 
182 tt seq. ; change in character of, 
211). 

Import duties, reserved to Duke of 
York, 54. 

Independence, but dimly seen at first, 
113; the logical result of revolu- 
tionary measures, 128. 

India, search for new route to, 
1,5. 

Indian Ocean, trade with ports of, 
75; piracy on, 77. 

Indians, fate of, 4; on shores of Hud- 
son Liver, 5, 0; early strife with, 
5; first taste of fire-water, ; trade 
with, 9; sell Manhattan Island, 12; 
Minuit's relations with, 14, 15; Van 
Tuiller's relations with, 17 ; massa- 
cre Dutch colonists on Delaware 
River, 18, sale of weapons to, for- 
bidden, 20; war with, under Kieft's 
administration, 22-24 ; Stuy vesant's 
relations with, 33; danger from, 
38, 39; treatment by Governor 
Nicolls, 42; relations with Gover- 
nor Lovelace, 44; end of slavery of, 
50; Dongan's relations with, 50; pri- 
vate acquisitions of land from, 80. 

Ingoldsby, Richard, lieutenant-gov- 
ernor, lands at New York, 70; skir- 
mish with Lelsler's troops, 70. 

Inns, 21, 97. 

Irish, prominent element of popula- 
tion, 90, 91 ; Protestantism of early 



224 



Index. 



IRVING 

settlers, 91; furnish large propor- 
tion of auxiliaries to British troops, 
133, note; immigration, 184-186; 
riots, 205, 206; decrease of immi- 
gration, 210. 

Irving, Washington, 171, 197. 

Italians, maritime enterprise of, 2; 
immigration, 210. 

Jail, the, 97. 

James II. (see also York, Duke of), 
accession of, 55; change of policy, 
56; opposition to, 57; tyranny of, 
62; hatred of his government, 62, 
63; action in exile, 65. 

Java, value compared with New 
Netherlands, 4, 47. 

Jay, John, conservative principles 
of, 113; member of Committee of 
Fifty-one, 121; attitude in the Rev- 
olution, 125; leader in Provincial 
Congress, 128; leader of Federalist 
party, 149, 153; character, 149, 
153; defender of Loyalists, 14J; 
joint author of the "Federalist," 
150; opposition to, 153; appointed 
chief-justice, 154 ; treaty with 
England, 156 ; appointments of, 
161. 

Jealousy, class, 60; ill effects of, 106, 
131; Washington's troubles from 
State, 141. 

Jefferson, Thomas, tie-vote in Elec- 
toral College, 159; chosen Presi- 
dent, 159; maxim as to patronage, 
161; antagonism to Burr, 162. 

J effe rsonian Republicans, rise of, 
153. 

Jews, religious community in eigh- 
teenth century, 90, prohibition of 
suffrage to, 92. 

Johnxon family, leaders in court 
partv, 112; rulers of Mohawk Val- 
ley, 112. 

Judges, election of, 176. 

Justices, first, 41. 



LEISLER 

Kidd, Captain, fitted out as pirate- 
hunter, 83; turns pirate, 83; hung, 
83; buried treasure of, 83, 84. 

Kieft, William, succeeds Van Twil- 
ler, 19; character and government, 
19-25; Indian wars, 22-24; chooses 
council, 24; removed, 25. 

King, Kufus, made senator, 154. 

King's College, under control of 
Church of England, 92; expulsion 
of president, 127 , change of name, 
142. See also Columbia Col- 
lege. 

Kip's Buy, American forces routed 
at, 134, 135. 

Knickerbocker Club, 211. 

Know-Nothing paity, 194. 

Labour, early colonial, 97-100. 

Labour party, of 1830, 193. 

Labour riots, 192. 

La Montague, Johannes, councillor 
with Kieft, 20, 23. 

Language, English, the official, 91; 
abandonment of Dutch, 91, 173; 
trench, 174 and note; German, 
174, 184, 185. 

Launderer, a pedagogical, 17. 

Lawrence, Cornelius Van Wyck, 
elected mayor, 193. 

Legislative council, the first, 30. 

Legislature, loyalty to George III., 
124; control citv government, 146, 
147. 

Leisler, Jacob, leader of popular 
party in 1689, 61 ; character, 62, 
68-70; quarrel with collector of 
the port, 63 ; overcomes lieutenant- 
governor and city council, 64; 
short-sighted policy of, 65-67; op- 
position to Episcopalians and Puri- 
tans, 66; general opposition to, 67, 
disobey royal proclamation, 67; 
nominated as commander-in-chief, 
68 ; assumes title of lieutenant-gov- 
ernor, 68; rule not recognized by 



Index. 



225 



LEISLERIAN 

Albany, 68 ; quarrel with New Eng- 
land allies, 69; treatment of Long 
Islanders, 69 ; deserted by his sup- 
porters, 70, 71; refuses to recognize 
Lt.-Gov. Ingoldsby, 70 ; arrested 
and hung, 71 ; disinterred and hon- 
oured, 82. 

Leiskrian party, put down, 85 ; in- 
fluence of, 87. 

Lewis, Morgan, 157: elected gover- 
nor, 163; defeat of, 164. 

Libel law, obsolete theory of, 102. 

Liberties and privileges, charter of, 
54 ; granted by Dongan, 55. 

Liberty, struggle for, 147. 

Liberty pole, erection of, 118; riot 
over, 119, 120. 

Libraries, the New York Society, 
142; the Astor, 179. 

Literary societies, 171. 

Literature, early colonial, 97; rise of, 
171; the birthplace of American, 
197; growth of, 213, 214. 

Livingston, Edward, appointed mayor 
and U. S. district attorney, 162. 

Livingston, Robert E., feelings to- 
ward Hamilton, 154. 

Livingston, Robert, partner with Cap- 
tain Kidd, 83. 

Livingston family, descent of, 72, 
note; armorial bearings of, 94; 
leaders in the popular party, 103, 
112, 117; prominent members of, 
128, note, 129, note ; supporters of 
Hamilton, 154; indorse Burr, 155 ; 
distrust of Burr, 157; apportion- 
ment of patronage among, 162 ; op- 
position to Burr, 162, 163; decline 
of power, 164 ; power of, 166. 

Local boards, 196. 

Loco-foco party, 194. 

Long Island, English take possession 
of eastern half of, 22 ; revolt against 
Stuyvesant on, 33; Puritans refuse 
to be taxed, 43; horse-racing on, 
43 ; troubles between Puritans and 



MANHATTAN 

Colve, 46; Leisler's operations in, 
69; Tory majority in, 130; landing 
of British troops on, 133; supply of 
provisions from, 169. 

Long Island Sound, first ship on, 7, 
8 ; new settlements on, 21 ; pas- 
sage forced by British fleet, 136; 
steamboats on, 177. 

Lovelace, Gov. Francis, successor to 
Nicolls, 43; character, 43; trou- 
bles with Long Island Puritans, 
43 ; supported by Dutch and Eng- 
lish, 44; relations with Indians, 
44; establishes mail to Boston and 
Hartford, 44, 45. 

I^oyidists, devotion of, 124; plun- 
dered, 127, 133 ; their newspaper 
cilice wrecked, 127 ; flight of, 132 ; 
in population surrounding the city, 
137 ; deported on evacuation, 141 ; 
Hamilton and Jay as defenders of, 
149 ; restored to legal equality 
with other citizens, 149. See also 
Tories. 

Loyalty, lack of, in early Dutch set- 
tlers, 13 ; of citizens at outbreak 
of civil war, 202. 

Ludlow family, prominent members 
of, 128 and note. 

Lutheran Church, growth of, 210. 

Lutherans, persecution by Stuyve- 
sant, 35 ; religious liberty under 
English rule, 41. 

Liitzen, battle of, 3. 

Madagascar, pirate station at, 77. 
Madison, James, joint author of 

the " Federalist," 150. 
Magazines, 213. 
Magyar immigration, 210. 
Maiden Lane, origin of name, 31. 
Mall, the, 93. 
Manhattan, discovery of, 1, 5; value 

compared with Java, 4 ; Dutch post 

on, 8; early civilized life on, 8, 9; 

sold to the Dutch, 12. 



l 5 



226 



Index. 



MANUFACTURE 

Manufacture, right to, 21. 

Markets, 169. 

Massachusetts, effects of rebellion in, 
147. 

Mayor, first, 41 ; office abolished, 45 ; 
appointed by governor, 55 ; first 
elective, 68; appointment of James 
Duane, 146. 

Mayoralty, colonial system of ap- 
pointment to, 146 ; change in man- 
ner of election to, 176; first elec- 
tion by universal suffrage, 193. 

Mayors, various nationalities of, 88. 

Meeting, first popular, 24. 

Mercenary troops, New England, 
24; employment of Hessians, and 
hatred for," 131, 132. 

Merchants, early colonial, 97. 

Methodist Church, strength before 
the Revolution and at present day, 
90; increase in, 143. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 213. 

Metropolitan Opera House, 213. 

Milborne, Jacob, leader of popular 
party in 1689, 61; hung, 71; disin- 
terred, 82. 

Military law, established by Colve, 
46, 47. 

Militia, rising against Gov. Nichol- 
son, 63, 64. 

Mill, the first, 16. 

Minuit, Peter, first governor of the 
colony. 11; character, 12; buys 
Manhattan Island from Indians, 
12 ; relations with Indians, 14, 15; 
relations with English, 15; rule of, 
15, 16; recall of, 16 ; enters Swed- 
ish service, 16; leads band of 
Swedes to the Delaware, 22. 

Mitchell, Dr. Samuel, 171. 

Mohawk River, fort near, 8. 

Mohawks, secret society, reorganiza- 
tion of, 120. 

Mohawk Valley, under rule of John- 
son family, 112. 

Money, issue of paper, 88. 



NEW ENGLAND 

Montreal, Schuyler's raids on, 69. 

Morris, Chief-Justice, expelled from 
office, 102 ; conservative principles 
of, 113. 

Morris, Gouverneur, type of Whig 
party, 124; attitude in the Revolu- 
tion, 125; leader of Federalist 
party, 149; position in 1812,165; 
elected senator, 155 ; plans Erie 
Canal, 177. 

Morris family, armorial bearings of, 
94; leaders in Provincial Congress, 
128. 

Morse, Samuel F. B., 178. 

Mount Vernon Gardens, 168. 

Museums, 213. 

Native American party, 159, 194. 

Naturalization, 39, 54. 

Negroes, early importations of, 29; 
legislation against assemblages of, 
55 ; in early colonial times, 89-101 ; 
plot of 1741, 99 ; massacre of, 100, 

-101; annual celebration of Pink- 
ster, 96 ; emancipation, 174 ; suf- 
frage, 175; in draft riots, 204. 

Netherlands, cradle of seamen, 1. 

New Amsterdam, founded, 12; mix- 
ture of population, 12, 28, 29; be 
ginning of stable existence, 28 
compared with New England, 29 
society in, 23, 30 ; incorporation of 
30 ; appearance of the town, 31, 32 
costume in, 32 ; amusements, 33 
seized by England, 36, 37; name 
changed to New York, 38, 47. 

New England, English settlements 
in, 3; compared with New Amster- 
dam, 29; colonists held in check by 
Stuwesant, 33 ; settlers opposed to 
aristocracy and Episcopacy, 40, 41 ; 
united to New York and New Jer- 
sey, 57; action on fall of the Stuarts, 
60; indifference to welfare of New 
York, 81 ; quarrels with Gov. 
Fletcher, 81; indifference to New 



Index. 



227 



ENGLANDERS 

York's prosperity, 107; sympathy 
for, in New York, 121. 

New L'nglanders, characteristics of, 
19; kept in check by Colve, 4G. 

"New £ riff land Invasion," the, 174. 

New Jersey, settlements in, 21 ; sev- 
ered from New York, 48 ; united 
with New York and New England, 
57 ; retreat of Washington to, 136. 

"New Netherlands the, 11. 

New Netkerland Company, forma- 
tion of the, 9. 

New Netherlands, value compared 
with Java and Surinam, 4, 47; 
named, 10 ; decline of, 19 ; seized 
by England, 36, 37. 

Newsboys' lodging house, 211. 

Newspapers, scurrility of, 155, 166. 
See also their titles. 

New Year observance, 95. 

New Yorker, composition of a typi- 
cal, 89. 

New York Medical Society, 143. 

New York Province, united with New 
England and New Jersey, 57. 

New York Society Library, 142 

Nicholson, Sir Francis, leader of 
aristocratic part}' in 1689, 61 ; 
quarrel with militia, 64. 

Nicolls, Col. Richard, seizes New 
Amsterdam, 37; agent for Duke of 
York, 39 ; rule in New York, 39- 
43; character, 39, 41, 42; refuses 
right of election of representatives, 
42; treatment of Indians, 42; bene- 
fits of his control, 42; returns to 
England, 43. 

Night-schools, 211. 

" Nine Men" the, 35. 

Non-importation agreement, the, 114. 

North Carolina, effects of rebellion 
in, 147. 

Northwest passage, search for, 1, 5. 

O'Brien, Colonel, killed in draft 
riots, 205. 



PLOTS 

" Onres'," the, first ship built in 

American waters, 7. 
Opera-house riot, 191, 192. 

Pacijic Mail Steamship Company, 
180. 

Packet ships, 181. 

Palisades, the, 7. 

Panic, of 1836, 192. 

Paper money, issue of, 88, 146. 

Parks, 211. 

Park Theatre, 168. 

Parties, political, 40, 41, 50; effect 
of race on, 61. 

Passport system, 20. 

Paternal government, 20, 27, 28. 

Patriotism, of Revolutionary party, 
131; of Presbyterian settlers, 133, 
note. 

Patronage, early system of, 146; 
Jefferson's maxim as to, 161 ; mer- 
ciless use of, 163. 

Patroon, title of, 14. 

Patroons, troubles with, 14, 15; 
privileges of, 21 ; turned into ma- 
norial lords, 41 ; Stuyvesant's 
struggles with, 34. 

Penn, William, advice to James II., 
52. 

Philadelphia, compared with New 
York in 1710, 89 ; sentiment about 
Tea Act, 120; meeting of Congress 
at, 152. 

Phillipse family, leaders in court 
party, 61, 112. 

Pinkster, observance of, 95, 96. 

Piracy, premium on, 81. 

Pirates, 74, 75; success and numbers 
of, 76-79; engaged in slave trade, 
77 ; efforts toward abolition of, 
79 ; Bellomont's crusade against, 
83; career of Captain Kidd, 83. 

Players' Club, 213. 

PlnU, rumours of Catholic, 63; negro, 
99; for abduction or murder of 
Washington, 132. 



228 



IXDEX. 



PLUNDERING 

Plundering, by Continental Armv, 
133. 

Plymouth settlei-s, enter the Con- 
necticut Valley, 18. 

Police board, 196. 

Police riots, 196. 

Polish immigration, 210. 

Political corruption, 206-208, 215. 

Poor-house, 97. 

Poor-laws, 88. [of, 24. 

Popular government, foreshadowing 

Popular party, in 1689, 61; constitu- 
tion of, 61, 112; in control of the 
city, 6*1 ; downfall of, 71 ; opposed 
by Fletcher, 79, 80; corruption of, 
85; hated by Cornbury, 85 ; news- 
paper of the, 102 ; known as Wings, 
103; great families in, 112; shrink 
from independence, 123 ; excesses 
by, 124. 

Popular rights, struggle for, 72. 

Population, increase of, 15; character 
of early, 28, 29, 39, 40 ; at time of 
second establishment of English 
rule, 48; fusion of races, 58, 59, 89, 
90, 187; in 1710, 89, 90; at out- 
break of Revolution, 89 ; diversity 
of, 89; line drawn between Pro- 
vincial and Old World people, 94; 
Presbyterians, Dutch, aid Hugue- 
nots, 112; increase after Revolu- 
tion, 142; at beginning of nine- 
teenth century, 166; condition at 
close of war of 1812, 173, 174; in 
1820, 175; increase of, 176; in 
I860, 201; proportion of foreign 
element in, 210; Americanization 
of, 210,216. 

Portugal, early explorations of, 2. 

" Potiphar Papers," 198. 

Poverty, dangers of, 182. 

Presbyterians, opposed to aristocracy 
and episcopacy, 40, 41 ; persecuted 
by Cornbury, 86; immigration of, 
87; strength in eighteenth cen- 
tury, 90. 



RELIGIOUS 

Press, liberty of, 102. 

Press-gangs, 114, 115. 

Princeton College, 96. 

Prison-ships, horrors of, 140, 141. 

Privateering, popular and profitable, 
75, 76, 173. 

Privateers, depredations on com- 
merce, 44, 74 ; capture of French 
6hips by, 69; riots of crews, 75, 76; 
fitted out in British interests, 137. 

Protestants, liberty of conscience 
granted to, 71. 

Provincial Assembly, demanded and 
granted, 52 ; issue of writs for, 53. 

Public buildings, 10, 211. 

Public lands, apportionment of, by 
Fletcher, 80. 

Puritans, hostility to Dutch, 18 ; in- 
subordination on Long Island, 43 ; 
troubles with Colve, 46; hostility 
of Andros to, 50. 

Putnam, Gen. Israel, 135. 

Q'uake7-s, refuge for, 22; persecution 
by Stuyvesant, 35 ; in the eigh- 
teenth century, 90. 

Queen Anne, appoints Lord Cornbury 
governor, 85 ; resemblance of Lord 
Cornbury to, 86. 

Race, effect on parties, 61. 

Race prejudice, early, 40. 

Races, mixture of, 12. 

Railroads, development of, 177. 

Raritan Indians, war with, 22, 23. 

Redemptioners, 97. 

Red River, Valley of, barred from 

settlement, 14. 
Red Sea, trade with ports of, 75; 

piracy on, 77. 
Red Star Line, the, 181. 
Religion, effect on parties, 62. 
Religious bodies, in colonial times, 90. 
ReU'/inus differences, 189. 
Religious liberty, 22, 39, 41, 44, 53- 

55, 141-143. 



Index. 



229 



RENSSELAERSWYCK 

Rensselaerswyck, extent of, 14; Stuy- 
vesant's troubles with the patroon 
of, 34. 

Republican party, origin of name, 
152; rise of, 194. 

"Restless," the. See "Onrest." 

Revolution, causes leading to, 104- 
127; first bloodshed in the, 120; 
dangers of, 126; operations against 
New York, 131; results of war, 
142. 

Ring politics, 206-208. 

Riots, Stamp Act, 115, 116; liberty- 
pole, 119, 120 ; ante-Revolution, 
126, 127 ; anti-Federalist, 156 ; 
theatre, 191; Astor Place, 191, 192; 
bread, 192; labour, 192; abolition, 
192; election, 193; police, 196; 
draft, 203-205 ; Hibernian, 205, 
206. 

Ruerside Drive, 210, 211. 

Romnn Catholic Church, hatred of, 
62, 63 ; priests condemned to death 
by Assembly, 86; weakness before 
the Revolution, 90 ; increased 
strength at present day, 90 ; growth, 
176, 188, 210; Americanization of, 
189, 190. 

Roman Catholics, forbidden entrance 
to the colony, 92; patriotism of, in 
Maryland, 133, note; liberation of, 
143. 

Roosevelt, Isaac, 128, note. 

Roosevelt, John J., 129, note. 

Roosevelt, Nicholas, leader in Pro- 
vincial Congress, 128, note; pio- 
neer in steam navigation, 172. 

Russian immigration, 210. 

Rynders, Isaiah, 196, 202. 

Sabbatarian legislation, 55. 
St. Lawrence River, French common- 
wealth on, 4. 
St. Mark's Church, 26. 
St. Patrick's Church, 197. 
Sanitary Commission, the, 203. 



SEPARATIST 

Sanitary conditions, 169. 

Santa Fe, 4. 

Saskatchewan Valley, barred from 
settlement, 14. 

Savings bank, the first, 170. 

Scandinavian immigration, 210. 

Schepens, abolition of the, 41 ; office 
restored, 45. 

Schoolmaster, the first, 17. 

Schools, 97. 

School system, founded, 170, Roman 
Catholic opposition to, 194, 195. 

Schout fiscal, the, 16 ; abolition of 
the, 41 ; office restored, 45. 

Schuyler, Peter, leads opposition to 
Leisler in Albany, 68; raids on 
Montreal, 69. 

Schuyler, Philip J , elected senator, 
155. 

Schuyler family, leaders in the pop- 
ular party, 112 ; supporters of Ham- 
ilton, 154. 

Scientific societies, 171. 

Sclave immigration, 210. 

" Saibner's Magazine," 213. 

Seafaring population, 74, 75. 

Seamen, an age of, 1, 2 ; bravery of 
colonial, 107. 

" Sea- Mew," the, brings the first 
true colonists 11. 

Sea-rovers, 2. 

Sears, Isaac, 128. 

Secession, proposed, 202. 

Sedan chairs, 95. 

Self-government, Dutch love for, 21; 
demands for, 25 ; early steps to- 
ward, 53, 54, 74; failure under 
James II., 56; action of Assembly 
in regard to, 86; a necessary in- 
gredient in, 87 ; of Canada and 
Australia, 108; restriction of, 146; 
powers of American cities con- 
trasted with those of Europe. 146. 

Selfishness, among colonists, 106. 

Separationists, 123. 

Separatist idea, 57. 



230 



Index. 



SERVANTS 

Sen nits, early colonial, 97-100. 

Settlement, first, 8-11. 

Seventh Regiment, 203. 

Seymour, Gov. Horatio, conduct in 
draft riots, 204; in presidential 
election of 1868,207. 

Sheriff, first, 41; office abolished, 45; 
appointment of, 146. 

Sherman, Gen. W. T., 214. 

Ship-building, 181. 

Slavers, as pirates, 77. 

Slaves, early importations of, 29 ; 
legislation against assemblages of, 
55; insurrections of, 87, 99; in 
early colonial times, 98-101. See 
also Negroes. 

Slave trade, 75. 

Slaughter, Governor, 70, 71. 

Smith, Rev. Sydney, criticism on 
American literature, 197. 

Smuggling, early, 76 ; premium on, 
80 ; put down by Bellomont, 82. 

Social life, 95, 152; at beginning of 
nineteenth century, 166-168; in 
modern times, 198-200, 215. 

Social lines, 92, 93. 

Society, in New Amsterdam, 29, 30; 
in 1710, 89. 

Sons of Liberty, organization of, 114; 
meeting of, 115 ; defence of the 
liberty-pole, 119 ; reorganization 
of, 120 ; riots and proceedings of, 
126. 

Spain, early explorations of, 2; wan- 
ing power of, 2 ; tenacity in Am- 
erica, 3 ; warfare of the West India 
Company against, 10, 11; wars 
with, 74." 

Spanish wars, retarded American 
Revolution, 109. 

Spoils system, establishment of, 160 ; 
De Witt Clinton's introduction of, 
177. 

Sports, early colonial, 95, 96. 

Stadt-huys, the, 31. 

Stamp Act, passage of, 113; opposi- 



TAXATION 

tion to, 113, 114, 12-3 ; rioting, 
115, 116; repeal of, 117. 

Stamp Act Congress, meeting of, 
114; Declaration of Rights and 
Address by, 114. 

Staten Island, settlements on, 21; 
Tory majority in, 130. 

Steam navigation, beginning of, 171; 
increase in, 177; Vanderbilt's con- 
nection with, 180. 

Stevens, John, pioneer in steam navi- 
gation, 172. 

Stockades, Indian, 24;" on site of Wall 
Street, 30. 

Stock-sivindling, 207. 

Storm King, 7. 

Street railways, beginning of, 196. 

Streets, laying out, 21; lighting of, 
168; cleaning of, 168, 169. 

Stuart dynasty, consequences of over- 
throw of, 60, 73. 

Stuyvesant, Peter, succeeds Kieft as 
governor, 25; tradition about, 26; 
personal appearance and character, 
26, 27; residence, 31; relations 
with Indians and New Englanders, 
33 ; seizes the Swedish colony on 
the Delaware, 33; quarrels with the 
colonists, 34-36. 

Suffrage, limitations of, 144; widen- 
ing of, 175; universal, 215. 

Sugar-house, used as prison, 140. 

Sumptuary laws, 20. 

Surinam, value compared with New 
Netherlands, 43, 47. 

Swallow Tail Line of packets, the 
181. 

Swedes, settlements in America, 3, 4; 
trouble on the Delaware, 22, 33. 

Tammany Hall, controls Democratic 

party, 195. 
Taverns, the first, 21; establishment 

of, 97. 
Taxation, opposition to Stuyvesant's 

plan of, 35; of Long Island 



Index. 



231 



Puritans, 43; by Colve, 47; indi- 
rect, 108, 109; claim of "110 taxa- 
tion without representation," 109. 

Tea Act, passage of, 120; opposition 
to, 120, 121, 123. 

Tenant-farming , favoured by Fletch- 
er, 80. 

Theatre, early, 95. 

" Times" the, exposures of Tweed, 
208. 

Tories, name assumed by court party, 
103; numerous in New York, 111; 
rioting by, 123; persecution of, 
124; ferocity of struggle with 
Whigs, 126; persecutions of, 127; 
weakening influence among colon- 
ists, 130; plotting among, 132; 
destruction of power, 144. See 
also Loyalists. 

Trading companies, 9-11. 

Travelling, in early colonial daj - s, 95. 

Treasurer, early powers of, 146. 

Trenton, battle "of, 136. 

" Tri-lnsula,'' proposed independent 
commonwealth, 202. 

Trinity Church, rebuilt, 142; beauty 
of, 197. 

Tryon, Gov. William, 127. 

Tweed, William M., 207, 208. 

Underhill, Capt. John, Indian fighter, 

24, 33. 
Union, rise of the principle of, 147. 
Union Club, 211. 
Union League Club, 211. 
University Club, 211. 
Ury, Rev. John, hung for complicity 

in negro plot, 101. 

Van Cortlandt, Stephanus, leader of 
aristocratic party in 1639, 61 ; 
chased from the city, 67. 

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 178-180. 

Van Rensselaer, patroon, 14. 

Van Rensselaer family, leaders in 
Provincial Congress, 128; support- 



WASHINGTON 

ers of Hamilton, 154; influence of, 

164. 
Van Twiller, Wouter, succeeds Min- 

uit, 16; character, 16-18; relations 

with Indians, 17; relations with 

English, 17, 18; removal of, 18, 19. 
Van Wyck, Abraham, 129, note. 
Varick, Eobert, mayoralty of, 162. 
Vassalage, system of, 15. 
Virginia, English settlements in, 3; 

influence over other colonies, 124. 
Virginians, take possession of Dutch 

forts on Delaware River, 18. 
Vox Populi placards, 115. 

Walker, William, filibuster, 180. 

Wallabout Bay, prison ships in, 140, 
141. 

Walloons, early colonists, 11, 12; 
early settlers of New-Amsterdam, 
28." 

Wall Street, origin of name, 30; 
swindling in, 207. 

Warehouses, first, 16. 

War of 1812, 172, 173. 

Washington, D. C., 214. 

Washington, George, rebukes de- 
stroyers of monument, 117 ; passes 
through New York to Boston, 127; 
makes New York his headquarters, 
128; discordant materials for his 
work, 130, 131; plot for abduction 
or murder of, 132; proposes to burn 
the city, 132 ; training his raw 
army, 132; punishes outrages by 
his army, 132, 133; rescues forces 
from Long Island, 134; courage of, 
134, 135; evacuates New York, 
134, 135; at rout at Kip's Bay, 135; 
at Haarlem Heights, 135; retreat 
from New York, 136; retreats to 
New Jersey, 136; crosses the Dela- 
ware, 136; wins battle of Trenton, 
136 ; difficulties of his position, 141 ; 
re-enters city, 141; influence of, 
148; inaugurated President, 152; a 



232 



Index. 



WATER 

Federalist, 154; appointments in 
New York, 154, lbO; respect for 
memory of, 213. 

Water, early supply of, 169. 

Wealth, increase after Revolution, 
142; growth of, 201. 

Webster, Noah, 156. 

" We Dare " placards, 115. 

Weekawken, N. J., Hamilton-Burr 
duel at, 164. 

" Weekly Journal,''' the, established 
101, 102. 

West India Company, chartered, 9 ; 
real founders of the city, 10 ; mag- 
nitude of its operations, 10, 11; 
appreciation of stock of, 14; treat- 
ment of colony, 15; decline of in- 
terest in New Netherlands, 19; 
death of, 46. 

West Indies, early trade with, 74. 

Whale fisheries, early, 44. 

Whig party, the, 193. 

Whigs, name assumed by popular 
party, 103; attitude in early days 
of Revolution, 124; feiocity of 
struggle with Tories, 126. 

Whitehall, 31. 



ZEN'GER 

Whitehall Street, origin of name, 31. 

White Plains, battle of, 136. 

Wild beasts, 12. 

William III., accession of, 58; ap- 
points governor and lieutenant- 
governor, 70 ; grant of liberties bj', 
73; 74. 

Windmills, 16. 

Wolves, reward for scalps, 31. 

Wood, Fernando, elected maj'or, 196; 
disloyalty of, 202. 

Working-classes, 216. 

Working-girls'' clubs, 211. 

Yellow fever, scourges of, 169. 

York, Duke of, 38 ; patentee of New 
Netherlands, 39; character, 44; 
advocates religious tolerance for 
New York, 44; summons Andros to 
England, 51; sends spy to examine 
affairs of colony, 51; takes advice, 
from William Penn, 52. See also 
James II. 

Zenger, John Peter, founder of the 
" Weekly Journal," 101, 102 ; ar- 
rest and trial of, 102. 



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